RSS can defuse Modi's Brahmastra
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on March 3, fished out quotes from three generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family to embarrass Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in the Lok Sabha. In the days, weeks and months ahead, Rahul should be ready to face many more jibes from Modi.
For Modi now has in his possession a "Brahmastra", that is a destructive weapon. And that's the Brahmastra of "gaon and garib" (villages and poor). Rahul's grandmother, former prime minister Indira Gandhi had used the same populist weapon - you say "Indira hatao", I say "garibi hatao" - to destroy the opposition.
But much to Modi's discomfort, his version of pro-poor populist slogans articulated through the 2016-'17 Budget reek of contradictions that can embarrass him no end.
The pro-poor, pro-farm sector policy tilt doesn't go well with the BJP's current neo-conservative and ultra-nationalist ideological pursuit. Modi's new positioning has a socialist tinge, while the BJP's politics continues to be draped in the saffron colour of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
The Budget seeks to shift the BJP's economic policy from centre-right to a centrist paradigm. But politically, the party looks determined to carry on with its right-wing, sectarian and xenophobic agenda.
The mixing of the two is neither good economics nor good politics. History is witness to the fact that the mixing of populist, socialist-tinged economics and ultra-nationalistic politics has produced a dangerous cocktail called national socialism.
Does the term national socialism ring a bell? Yes. It was Adolf Hitler's creed.
Modi will have to reconcile his divergent politics for the successful implementation of his policies. So, will the BJP climb down from its national versus anti-national rhetoric?
There is no sign as yet of the BJP leaders toning down their rhetoric. On the contrary, the party leaders have been scaling it up. A day before the Budget was presented, Union minster of state for human resources development, Ram Shankar Katheria, and a party MP were accused of having made hate speeches targeting a minority community at Agra.
BJP president Amit Shah has kept the party's national versus anti-national stance alive. At a public meeting in Uttar Pradesh on February 24, Shah once again challenged the Rahul Gandhi to either condemn the pro-Afzal Guru, anti-India slogans raised at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) or admit that he supports them.
The decision to pursue cases against the JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar and other arrested student leaders is indication of the government's determination to pursue the politics of ultra-nationalism. Modi's continued silence is both affirmation and encouragement of the party's stance.
Modi's new positioning too is not as simple as it sounds. There are confirmed reports of the RSS having prevailed over the Union finance minister Arun Jaitley to make sufficient provisions for the rural population in the Budget to ease farmers' distress. "Gaon, garib, mahila and kisan (villages, the poor, women and farmers) was the RSS' idea to drive the Budget.
The RSS' worldview doesn't see contradictions in mixing centrist politics with the ultra-nationalist narratives. Modi too seems comfortable with the idea. But neither the RSS nor Modi seems to be taking the diversities of India into account.
Modi's new political positioning will sharpen the inner contradictions within the larger Sangh Parivar. The BJP's core constituencies of the urban middle classes and trading classes are unhappy with the Budget because it gave them precious little by the way of sops and incentives. The Budget has left them confused. They don't know the direction the party is taking.
Modi must also be aware that the bulk of the farmers and the people who till land belong to castes and sections of the people who are ill at ease with the RSS-led Hindutva ideology. They are not homogenous entities.
Populism, combined with an ultra-nationalist plank binds Modi in knots. On the one hand is the BJP's core urban constituency and its hardline Hindutva supporters who want to keep the deck on fire. On the other hand, Modi's new turn is espousing a model of development that calls for inclusive and liberal politics.
Modi is, perhaps, taking recourse to populism to tide over the political crisis. Populism has its own pitfalls. India has gone through the pains of populist politics that raised people's expectations without backing up with a delivery mechanism. Also, the government's politics and its economic and social policies have to be aligned.
When Indira Gandhi embarked upon her populist socialist phase, she had aligned her politics with the left-leaning leaders in the Congress and the Communist Party of India (CPI). She had packed her Cabinet and the top-level bureaucracy with people who were schooled in the left of the centrist political thought.
In the later phase of her government, her politics and economics got disjointed. Her increasing failures and frustrations led to the growth of authoritarianism.
The UPA government under Manmohan Singh wasn't faced with contradictions either. Modi might face these contradictions in aligning centrist economic agenda with right-wing political pursuits. During the UPA 2, Congress president Sonia Gandhi had formed a supra body called National Advisory Council (NAC) that was packed with what some, what especially those in the BJP call, "jholawallas" who generally believed in pushing populist grassroots development.
The BJP's inner contradictions and the party's ultra-nationalist plank are fraught with possibilities to derail the Modi's populist agenda. The RSS itself can defuse Modi's Brahmastra.