Stuck in an image trap

Sometimes, there’s a flash of lucidity in the fulminations of ageing Sena leader, Bal Thackeray. Two days ago, the Sena patriarch combusted in an editorial in party gazette Saamna, when he sneered at his political ally, the BJP, for believing that a Narendra Modi could help the latter win an election outside Gujarat. 

Thackeray was only exorcising his own Modi nightmare — the Sena patriarch has often made scathing barbs about the Gujarat CM whenever the latter has campaigned in his fiefdom of Maharashtra, but is soon mollified by Modi’s hollow impact on the Marathi manoos, Thackeray’s  self-proclaimed prized possession.

This time, the Sena chief was referring to the tumultuous events in Bihar when the Gujarat chief minister ‘outed’ himself in a blaze of self-sponsored flattering ads to the horror of Bihar CM Nitish Kumar.

While Kumar was quick to condemn and disassociate himself with Modi, it pushed the Bihar CM and his ally in the state, the BJP, to a flashpoint — from Kumar’s partymen declaring that Modi will be disallowed to campaign in Bihar for the Assembly elections in October, to the BJP digging its heels in about self-respect and coalition dharma.

Now everybody loves a good spat, but the Bihar brawl once again reveals the desperation to re-invent Brand Modi. In the last few years, ever since the murderous Godhra riots of 2002 in Gujarat, Modi has had  so many makeovers he could make the pop queen of reinvention, Madonna, look orthodox.

From being the pin-up poster guy of prototypal Hindutva, to declaring himself as Hindu hriday samrat (King of Hindu hearts)  with his chappan ki chatti (56 inch chest), to becoming a Capitalist Dreamboat embracing  tycoons and industrialists from Ratan Tata to Anil Ambani, to becoming CEO of Gujarat who makes tough decisions, to becoming the man about town in trenchcoat and cowboy hat, to evolving to the People’s Man with his pro-poor and pro-development garib kalyan rallies, the list is endless. While political commentators lament about Modi stuck in an image trap, can Modi make up his mind whether he wants to be Rambo (Combatant of Evil) or Nano (Development Man)?

Modi, it seems, wants to be all at the same time, and is schizoid in his hurry to get out of Gujarat and claim national status as leader and as the BJP’s PM-in-waiting in the next round of elections. So convincing was Modi about his own power and potency after the Godhra massacre and his subsequent triumphant electoral victory in the state that the BJP succumbed to it, making him a star campaigner for the 2004 Lok Sabha polls.

The party got a rude shock when it was not only ousted out of power but Hindutva Modi was a no-no with the majority of India. It has been a downslide ever since — the Modi campaign trail barely makes an impact, in election after election, from assembly to Parliament, from Shahadra in Delhi to Ludhiana in Punjab, Vidharbha in Maharashtra to Bengalaru in Karnataka. The ultimate snub came from his own party colleagues after the 2009 Lok Sabha polls when they admitted the BJP lost because they made the blunder of projecting Modi as PM mid-stream of campaigning.

However, the Bihar fracas also highlights another phoneyism — Nitish Kumar’s hypocritical secular credentials. The political class has already exposed Kumar’s bogus secular pose — why did he not resign as the BJP-led NDA’s  Union railway minister when Godhra burned and other such posers — but what about his sneaking secular build-up by defining himself against the “fanatic, anti-Muslim” Modi? Kumar is coveting the Muslim vote, to expand his votebank to include More Backward Castes (MBCs), more deprived Dalits, to make a pitch for the top job in the state yet again later this year. By taking on Modi, Nitish Kumar has fashioned himself as the saviour of the secularists, that he is the only one who can silence and cut the Hindutva Hero to size. It’s Super Secular Me.

If there’s  anything as dangerous as the shrillness and divisiveness of Hindutva politics, it is the stealthy manipulation of people’s fears and terror of fascist politics. If Hindutva has to be silenced, it cannot be done by banning its top honchos and their extremist views, it has to be challenged and exposed in informed public discourse and through hard-headed administrative policies — if Modi breaks the law by creating enmity among communites, show courage to throw him into prison.  By banning Modi to campaign in the state, Nitish Kumar is merely selling an image of the Force of Good over Evil, and hopes to reap a rich harvest in the October polls. If you have nothing to say for yourself as chief minister or leader of the party, use the Modi bogey to show how principled and virtuous you are as leader. Mercifully, nobody is fooled either by Modi or Kumar.