Gujarati people, we do not like your chosen leader
“Gujarati people, we do not like your chosen leader. So rethink your options.” Kalyanaraman
The West has a very long history of accepting or rejecting leaders of weak nations at will. Modi is not the first person to fall in this category. In 1970s and 1980s, West (US included) actually suppressed the growth of democratic movements in mid-East and North Africa. The fear was that in a free and fair election, Islamic extremists will gain upper hand, and their ascent to power will severely compromise Western interests. And so, they supported a panoply of puppet regimes in Muslim countries. Prior to that US involvement in Iran, Phillippines, Western games in Indo-China, …. very clearly shows that preservation of self(ish) national interests precedes support to “democracy” and “human rights”.
But then, isn’t that realpolitik? I do not think that we should bother too much about the other side’s “hypocrisy”. Rather the focus should be: what can we do to provide an antidote to their scehmes in the context of India.
Over last 60 years, our response in above context has been limited to: (a) exposing the “hypocrisy” of the other side, (b) generating rhetoric with the intent of proving that we have “defeated” the other side “intellectually”. Policy making (foreign or internal) has been reduced to coming up with “strong” statements and issuing demarches. For instance, the Indian-secularists response to a bipolar world in pre-cold war era was: “Oh we do not want to divide, and so we are for a non-aligned world order.” That is empty rhetoric. Similarly, on the issue of socio-economic inequities prevelant in India, a Hindutva guy would respond by saying: “Oh we believe in sarve-bhavantu-sukhinah, sarve-santu-niramayah, and so we are running a large number of seva projects to alleviate human misery.” That is a tad better than the secularist’s response, but such a response still does not tell us as to what is the political (as in how it pertains to policy) formulation for fixing this problem at a structural level. No wonder, the output of BJP state govts is not measurably different than that of Congress sarkars, even though BJP state leadership is strongly nationalistic vis-a-vis their Congressi counterparts.
There are three noticeable exceptions to this observation, however. These are: (a) The land reform in West Bengal consolidated the support base of leftists. (b) The implementation of Mandal Comission Report, almost overnight evaporated the dominance of Congress and changed Indian politics forever. (c) Going in for nuclear explosions and incorporating nuclear arms in our arsenal was a major policy initiative, that goaded world powers to recalibrate their geo-political strategies. All other political “initiatives” by politicians are mere “debates”. Indian leadership, including that of Hindutva, has not graduated beyond conducting high-school and college level “debates” and “rebuttals”. Perhaps, due to 1000 years of slavery, we have forgotten the art and science of conducting politics, and unwittingly mistake rhetoric and “statements” for politics.