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Think Modi's India, see land of snake charmers and holy cow

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Angshukanta Chakraborty
Angshukanta ChakrabortySep 24, 2015 | 18:27

Think Modi's India, see land of snake charmers and holy cow

Even though Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears like a ring master mentally whipping a bunch of Irish schoolchildren to recite Sanskrit shlokas without him reciprocating the gesture or mentioning the great Irish contribution to world literature even once, the "global image" that the Indian government is so paranoid about is slipping out of control. The "soft power" that Shashi Tharoor wrote a whole book about - breezy read Pax Indica - is hardening into an unwieldy concoction of economic rapacity and sociocultural provincialism, which is, frankly speaking, unsustainable on both domestic and international platforms.

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What was supposed to be the fringe discomfort of an overwhelmingly "development-driven" party that was voted in to power in the last Lok Sabha elections, has turned out to be the dominant and defining trajectory of the national conversation now. While we were supposed to laugh at the occasional hiccups of a Sanatan Sanstha championing the "Hindu way of urinating" while allegedly murdering rationalists in broad daylight and threatening journalists who ask questions, and watch with relish the loosening hold of all the RSS ideologues on the economically-inclined savvy ministers in the Narendra Modi-led Union cabinet, the exact opposite is becoming the norm. In fact, what was supposed to be the marginal, is now the nodal point of origin of the "narratives about India".

In the nineteenth century, after the 1857 mutiny by Indian soldiers in British regiments resulted in the most gruesome crackdown, a subject flourished that took upon itself the job of "describing" India. Indology was a curious invention of the ethnographically-invested Europeans, led by British and Germans chiefly, which studied the vast spread of India and its diverse ways of life, to be happily contrasted with the glow of post-Enlightenment industrial age that Europe basked in. In doing so, it basically invented the reason why India must remain under its colonial masters because it was too uncouth and not touched by the scientific temperament driving the European military-financial-colonial might. In other words, Indology imagined the "snake charmers' India", pauperised (they naturally omitted the reason why) economically, culturally and racially.

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It took decades of independence movement and post-independence national self-fashioning to battle that enduring image. Nehru's India, while struggling with immense poverty and a completely drained coffer, nevertheless, challenged the Orientalist stereotypes by actively creating citizens who were brought up on a thoroughly internationalist outlook, were encouraged to have both scientific temperament and socio-religious tolerance. Non-alignment movement meant a secularism not only within the domestic setup, but also at the Cold War-torn international arena. Of course, there was rabid opposition to that state-driven endeavour from various factious quarters, but constitutionally, the individuals were guaranteed rights and freedoms at par with the global awareness on rights and freedoms and laws ensuring those. Moreover, curricula for various schools and universities across states created a holistic sense of history, the sciences and the social sciences with no particular religion or region given disproportionate importance or airbrushing of incontrovertible historical events and periods to suit ideological ends. 

Fighting stereotype, even though writers like Dominique Lapierre rode poverty porn to reach global acclaim, is a never-ending process. Yet, what must not be forgotten is that unless the grain of truth in each stereotype is not challenged from within, the outward change will never truly happen. It's not the snake charmers who are the problem here - they are a lovely, unfortunately disappearing lot, practicing an old, generational art - but the battle of perception. And India at present is an Indologist's wet dream, full of descriptive vigour and overflowing with religious arsenal, but utterly lacking an ethical command.

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While Ireland may perform a student drill to please Narendra Modi in Dublin and hardline Hindu males may get a hard-on by understanding this faux gesture as a reverse colonialism of a kind (history is clearly lost to them, for Ireland, too, used to be under British subjugation and underwent a bloody struggle for independence), the global conversation on India returns to Sanatan Sanstha's outrageous prescriptions. As BBC, the New York Times, Der Spiegel carry reports on how Modi conflated Ganesha's head with plastic surgery, claimed Vedic India had aircrafts (the scriptwriters of Doctor Who take note), even as they are compelled to express awe at a Madison Square Garden virtuoso oratory by the same man - India becomes a laughing stock of the entire world.

In other words, the "soft power" that a secular, democratic republic with a vast, multicultural, multireligious population can ethically wield, is losing ground to the temporary might of an economic promise based on unsustainable, environmentally and socio-culturally destructive dreams. When the fabric of a secular, tolerant India reveling in its diversity is torn apart, what gets exposed is the naked discrimination and culture wars being waged on a daily basis, making the country vulnerable to actual violence on the streets. When outdated patriarchal ideas are given authenticity of a fringe outfit like Sanatan Sanstha, which derives political capital because it has the covert backing of the party currently at the helm, India becomes less cosmopolitan and less attractive to those very Europeans, Americans and East Asians whom Prime Minister Modi is asking to "Come, Make (it) in India". If the digital universe that his government is promoting lacks basic encryption level, why on earth would giant MNCs risk their precious investment and data in this graveyard of governance?     

Modi and his battery of maladroit ministers have misread modernity. Even their technocratic obsession lacks self-awareness. They are undoing seven decades of painstaking "decolonisation of the gaze" - the gaze at India. That is neither sound politics, nor global pragmatics. Because they are losing the semantics.

Last updated: September 24, 2015 | 20:13
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