Haven’t we all united behind Prime Minister Narendra Modi, our national saviour-cum-reform evangelist? How can we still be in thrall to regionalist impulses, asks Vikram Johri
When Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw asked the Karnataka government to reveal how much of the taxpayer's money was being spent on changing the state capital's name from Bangalore to Bengaluru, a storm erupted on Twitter. One aggrieved respondent tweeted: "You know what: all your followers should start referring to you as CRAN or CRAYON and eventually you will know the difference."
Mazumdar-Shaw, who can claim to have Bangalore's best interests at heart -- apart from running India's number one biotechnology company from the city, she is also a member of the citizens' committee that liaises with the government on infrastructure issues -- would have found the response befuddling.
But such is the charge around the idea of ‘dhartiputra’ and such the vociferousness of the Twitterati that she found herself caught on the wrong foot.
The incident happened within days of an engineering student from Manipur being beaten for his inability to speak Kannada. This, too, happened in Bangalore, the supposed heart of India's cosmopolitan information-technology sector. What exactly is happening? Where is that new, reform-oriented India we keep hearing about? Haven't we all united behind Modi, our national saviour-cum-reform evangelist? How can we still be in thrall to such regionalist impulses?
Might we derive some solace from the outcome of the assembly elections in Haryana and Maharashtra that have reinforced the primacy of the Modi wave, and ipso facto, of the reform agenda?
The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, that great bugbear of all things north India, won a single seat. On his part, party chief Raj Thackeray lived up to his reputation when he thundered at a rally on October 5: "From the day you give this state in my hands, employment in any industry created in Maharashtra will be given only to Marathi boys and girls in Maharashtra. No employment will be given to the boys and girls from other states. Their entry will also be stopped. Their inquiry will be started from the train itself.”
Clearly, Thackeray's clarion call did not find many takers. So which is the real India? The one that beats up Northeasterners and takes to Twitter to deride saner voices, or one that renounces demagoguery and votes for reform?
One might be tempted to choose sides -- but, if examined closely, even the cult of Modi's leadership cannot be entirely divorced from the same fellow feeling that sustains identity politics in this country. And I am not even talking about religion here.
When the Bharatiya Janata Party parted ways with the Shiv Sena on the eve of the Maharashtra assembly election, there was concern over what the separation might entail not just for Mumbai's politics but also its peace. The largest numbers of migrants to Mumbai are Gujaratis, who have lived in the city for generations.
There were reports that the Gujarati community came out in hordes to vote on the election day, with areas such as Walkeshwar and Ghatkopar witnessing high turnouts. That this higher turnout went in the BJP's favour is a reasonable assumption.
The United States wing of the party, which calls itself, rather fancifully, "Overseas Friends of the BJP", is helmed by one Chandrakant Patel, a Gujarati. There is little doubt that Gujarat progressed under Modi's leadership, but for a state leader to strike such a grand success at the national stage can happen only with a fair bit of mythologising.
And no small part of this mythologising was played by Gujaratis spread across the country and abroad, who repeatedly narrated stories of a transforming Gujarat under Modi's leadership.
It was only a few years ago that the BJP had earned the sobriquet of being a "party of differences". Such was the clamour for the top post that it seemed eminently possible that the party would break up into tiny factions.
That it has, on the contrary, returned to power and is now setting the national agenda is no small achievement. What is noticeable is that the turnaround has happened under the leadership -- natural or forced -- of two men from Gujarat.
One must not overlook the chicken-and-egg nature of this success. It is unlikely that any other leader who ticked all the BJP's requirements to become prime minster would have been this successful this fast. That Modi has done this in spite of his lukewarm vibes with the RSS speaks for how deep his ‘vision’ has taken root.
This is manifested again and again, from the one-man army that his government has been reduced to, to the success of his US visit as prime minister, an event in which the Gujarati diaspora played no small part.
