Decoding Modi’s broom-neeti

Prime Minister Modi’s Swatchh Bharat Abhiyan is surely going to have an impact on our environment, health and education as well.

India does not have a culture of cleanliness because it suffered from the notion of indignity of labour for millennia. Those who produced goods and those who cleaned and created a healthy environment were treated as untouchables. Those who did not produce, and those who did not clean their environment were treated as clean and sacred.

The clean and unclean categories were constructed in the spiritual realm and later legitimised as sociological categories. The Indian Brahminic sociology created “purity'” and “pollution” as socially valid categories and Indian sociologists started using concepts like “clean” and “unclean” castes. What they essentially meant was that castes that do not clean their own environment were “clean” castes or communities, and those castes which cleaned their own living environment and that of others were “unclean” castes. This sociological language was derogatory and dehumanising.

During the 2014 election debate, when Priyanka Gandhi used the term neech (rajneeti), Modi understood it to mean neech jati and he was of the view that caste-based derogation was part of the Indian discourse. That debate is history now. The point, however, is that in Indian sociological language, those who produce goods or those who work to keep the living environment clean have come to be known as neech people.

Having experienced this social stigma himself, Mr Modi launched an initiative where everybody should participate in keeping their environments clean. This certainly brings the issue of dignity of labour back into our lives.

His recent Shramev Jayate slogan, which is like the traditional saying of Satyamev Jayate will also go a long way in this process. But industrialists should not use this slogan to justify their unfair hire-and-fire policy. However, the slogan in itself is good. The notion of satya (truth) is subjective. But the function of shram is objective. That is why teaching Shram Gaurav (dignity of labour) in our schools is most important to inculcate respect for shram (labour) in our future generations.

Earlier Indian PMs were keen to Sankritise (in essence, Brahminise) the state apparatus by using Hindu mythological concepts. One should be happy that Mr Modi seems to have started changing that. He is in a way trying to shudra-ise or “dalit-ise” the state apparatus, beginning with Delhi. One has to see how far he will succeed.

This certainly poses a challenge to the RSS and the Hindu spiritual system. The Hindu caste culture constructed a deep disrespect for labour and enormous respect for leisure. Hence, the upper classes live “leisure as life” while the lower classes live “labour as life”. Unless we change the core value of this living process, Swachh Bharat will only be a distant reality.

No Congress PM has dared to venture into this areas because the same BJP, RSS would have accused them of tampering with Hindu culture. Let us not forget that Mahatma Gandhi himself was not their icon, leave alone his respect for Shram Sanskriti.

Yet, today, many Congress leaders sport a visible saffron thread on their wrists while Mr Modi, quite curiously, sports only a small black thread. The younger Congressmen’s display of religion  is vulgar. Why have they given up the bold and secular lifestyle of Nehru who never used to go to any temple and was, after Gandhi, the most respected man?

In any case, now Mr Modi seems to be owning Gandhi and we have to wait and see how the RSS treats Gandhi in future.

The problem with the secularists and Communists was that they could not shake anybody’s tradition, right or wrong. They did not touch social reform at all. They were busy with growth and distribution. They never understood that poverty is a cultural issue.

Till this deeply-entrenched cultural malady is not addressed seriously, the stature of the nation will not grow. If we want to see India develop, mere economic agendas are not enough. People must work for social reform and Indian men  need to change their approach to cleanliness, public space and labour.

If Mr Modi is able to inspire the nation and solve the problem of “unclean” India, he’ll truly bring in a cultural revolution.

The writer is director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad