Tharoor on Modi’s Mid-Term: Parivar Haunts PM’s Sabka Vikas Agenda

Modi’s mid-term report card isn’t impressive when it comes to assuring the minorities, writes Shashi Tharoor.

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s term reaches its mid-point, the question of whether he is a polariser or unifier has assumed increasing importance. Is our Prime Minister a divisive figure, as his pre-2014 avatar implied he would be, or has he, in the last two-and-a-half years, been able to draw along people belonging to different communities and religions into a shared vision of Indianness that benefits all? The verdict is a mixed one.

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No Assurance to Minorities

Our government must be aware that they rode to power despite the fears of large sections of our society – shared by 69 percent of the electorate – that the Sangh Parivar is too divisive a force to govern a plural society like India. In particular, given the horrors of 2002 perpetrated on his watch, and his subsequent rhetorical excesses, there were real doubts as to whether Narendra Modi would reach out to Muslims, and indeed whether their needs even figured in his idea of India.

Prime Minister Modi has been either ambivalent or utterly silent on the many incidents that have divided Indian society, from ghar wapsi to the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq, from the Muzaffarnagar riots, to the aggressive promotion of cow protection. He has missed several opportunities to reach out and reassure the Muslim community. He has not even made the simple gesture of attending an Iftar during Ramadan, let alone hosting one as his predecessors did.

Modiji must know that there is a great deal of concern throughout the country, and particularly among our Muslim fellow-citizens, about whether the Bharatiya Janata Party and its fellow-travellers have the desire or the willingness to work for all of India’s communities, or whether they seek to profit from dividing the nation on sectarian lines. A few words of reassurance to the Muslim community, in particular, from the master orator could have gone a long way towards calming their disquiet. Instead, the Prime Minister has chosen to stay silent whenever insults are flung at Indian Muslims or they are invited to go to Pakistan.

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Snubbing the Media

Nor has the Prime Minister been communicative or even accessible to the press; he has broken with Prime Ministerial practice in not taking journalists on-board his official plane on his international travels; he has held no press conference nor granted any interviews. Our media is feeling spurned. The man they had hailed as the talking, tweeting, orating alternative to “Maun”mohan Singh’s taciturnity has turned out to be far less friendly to them institutionally and personally than they had taken for granted he would be.

It is yet another example of how much Modi-in-power differs from Modi-on-the-campaign-trail and the expectations raised by his electoral insurgency.

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Reaching Out to the Opponents

On the other hand, the PM has been making an effort to rise above the prejudices of his party colleagues in his own conduct and oratory. I myself became a surprising beneficiary of his generosity of spirit.

On Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday last year, I tweeted: “Happy Birthday @narendramodi. May you continue to serve India with energy & commitment. Will continue to disagree with your politics, but with respect!” What surprised me was his response, barely a couple of hours later: “Thank you, Dr. Tharoor. And, what is our democracy without constructive criticism! Debate makes us stronger.”

It is this willingness to reach out across the political divide to opponents that struck me as the most unusual personal characteristic of our Prime Minister. I had, after all, used the occasion of his birthday to remind him again of our political differences; yet he had not only taken that in his stride, but turned it around into a positive message of conciliation and collegiality.

A similar thing had happened, in fact, on the day of his election victory in 2014. It was only in the evening, as the results poured in and the size of his majority became apparent, that I issued this somewhat grudging tweet: “Still touring my constituency to thank party workers, but before it's too late, congratulations @NarendraModi & BJP on an astonishing victory”. Within minutes this came back from him: “@ShashiTharoor Many thanks. Congratulations for your victory as well. Let’s work together to create a better India!”

This is the spirit in which I would wish Narendra Modiji to continue to work. Let us, Government and Opposition, work together to create a better India. When your policies are manifestly in the national interest, let us support you; and when, in our view, they are not, let us take opposition constructively, respecting each other’s sincere faith in different paths to India’s betterment.

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The ‘Parivar’ Barrier

This hasn’t happened yet, except on a few specific issues. Could it still happen? The fact remains that while Mr Modi has not been personally guilty of saying or doing anything divisive or communal since becoming the Prime Minister, the Modi regime has given free rein to the most retrograde elements in the Indian society, who are busy rewriting textbooks to glorify Hindu leaders, extolling the virtues of ancient science over modern technology, advocating litmus tests for identikit nationalism, and asserting that India’s identity must be purely Hindu. The PM himself has spoken with generous inclusivity, in terms that he had not used during his ascent to power. But will his Parivar even want to live up to his words?

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Modi’s Dilemma

Majoritarian communalism, as Pandit Nehru had long recognised, is a fundamental threat to our pluralist democracy. But as a lifelong RSS pracharak, Modi had devoted himself to the very worldview he is repudiating in his Prime Ministerial speeches. Does he really mean it, or will it be yet another case of fine words completely divorced from any action?

It is in this context that the Prime Minister’s silence bothers me. It’s not just that he’s ignoring the media, which, given the quality of much of our media, may well be what they deserve. My bigger concern is that I believe the Prime Minister is missing an opportunity to send a signal of reassurance to a vulnerable minority that needs it. This sin of omission is all the more glaring because of the dissonance between his inclusive personal messaging and the sense of exclusion felt by the Indian Muslims whom his silence has slighted.

I have often pointed out the fundamental contradiction Mr Modi faces, of advocating, as Prime Minister, liberal principles and objectives whose fulfilment would require him to jettison the very forces that have helped ensure his electoral victories. The tension between his indulgence of the Hindutva brigades and his responsibilities as Prime Minister of India has become increasingly apparent. He may say all the right things himself, but he will not condemn the bigots in his own ranks, and by his refusal to condemn them, he condones their worst excesses.

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Taking Everyone Along

This contradiction is affecting not only his credibility as an effective leader of a government committed to development for all, but also his ability to attract the goodwill and investments of foreigners increasingly alarmed by media reports of mounting intolerance. His speeches and statements as PM imply the crossing of a Rubicon: he has made his choice. Government and development must prevail, at least in the short-term. Hindu zealotry can wait.

This doesn’t mean that the lifelong RSS pracharak must abandon his commitment to Hindutva or auction off his convictions like his controversial name-striped suit. Rather, it suggests that if Hindutva wants to triumph in the long term, it can only do so on the back of a government that is seen by the Indian public to have delivered development. For now, at least, that means swallowing the “garv se kahon ki hum Hindu hain” message in favour of “sab ka saath, sab ka vikas”.

That is what, I believe, Mr Modi is trying to do. But the closer we get to the next election, I fear the polarising logic of the political Parivar will trump the inclusivity its Prime Minister is trying to promote.

(As Modi reaches the half-way mark of his term in office, The Quint asks if Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been a unifier or polariser ever since he came to power in 2014. This is the view, you can read the counterview on the debate by BJP National Vice-President Vinay Sahasrabuddhe here.)

(Former UN under-secretary-general, Shashi Tharoor is a Congress MP and an author. He can be reached at @ShashiTharoor. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)