OPEN Magazine 26 May 2014

Collector’s Edition

l i f e

a n d

t i m e s .

e v e r y

RS 40 26 M ay 2 0 14

w e e k

kevin frayer/getty images

contentS Editor S Prasannarajan managing Editor PR Ramesh Deputy Editors Aresh Shirali, Ullekh NP art director Madhu Bhaskar Senior Editors Kishore Seram,

Haima Deshpande (Mumbai) Mumbai bureau chief Madhavankutty Pillai Associate Editor (Web) Vijay K Soni assistant editors

Anil Budur Lulla (Bangalore), Shahina KK, Aastha Atray Banan, Mihir Srivastava, Chinki Sinha, Sohini Chattopadhyay, Sunaina Kumar Special Correspondents Aanchal Bansal, Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia (Mumbai), Gunjeet Sra senior copy editor Aditya Wig copy editor Sneha Bhura Assistant Art Directors Tarun Sehgal, Anirban Ghosh SENIOR DESIGNER Anup Banerjee assistant Photo editor Ritesh Uttamchandani (Mumbai) Staff Photographers Ashish Sharma, Raul Irani Editorial Researcher Shailendra Tyagi Associate publisher Deepa Gopinath Associate general managers (advertisement) Rajeev Marwaha (North

and East), Karl Mistry (West), Krishnanand Nair (South) Manager—Marketing Raghav Chandrasekhar

National Head—Distribution and Sales

Ajay Gupta regional heads—circulation D Charles

(South), Melvin George (West), Basab Ghosh (East) Head—production Maneesh Tyagi pre-press manager Sharad Tailang

6

Triumph of the will | S Prasannarajan

8

the legend of modi | PR Ramesh and Ullekh NP

22

R Rajmohan

All rights reserved throughout the world.

Reproduction in any manner is prohibited.

Printed and published by R Rajmohan on behalf of the owner, Open Media Network Pvt Ltd. Printed at Thomson Press India Ltd., 18-35 Milestone, Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad—121007, (Haryana).

Published at 4, DDA Commercial Complex, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017.

Ph: (011) 30934199; Fax: (011) 30934162 To subscribe, sms ‘openmagazine’ to 56070 or log on to www.openthemagazine.com Or call our Toll Free Number 1800 300 22 000 or email at: subscription@openmedianetwork.in For corporate sales, email ajay@openmedianetwork.in For marketing alliances, email alliances@openmedianetwork.in For advertising, email advt@openmedianetwork.in

Volume 6 Issue 20 For the week 20—26 May 2014 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers

The man, the mind, the mandate and the mission

minimum cabinet, maximum governance | Dhiraj Nayyar The case for a downsized administration

cfo Anil Bisht hEAD—it Hamendra Singh publisher

The most amazing journey in Indian politics

8

24

24

salute the rising sun | Edward Luttwak

26

a call from gandhinagar | Tavleen Singh

30

deconstructing modi’s semiotic war

Tokyo and Delhi should forge a new Asian coalition

The morning I got a call from the Chief Minister’s Office

|

Shiv Visvanathan

Is it the end of Nehruvian India?

26

38

34

the modi hotness quotient | Lhendup G Bhutia

38

bespoke for the boss | Chinki Sinha

44

on a magic carpet in varanasi

On the sex appeal of the man with the fabled 56-inch chest

Designers dress up Modi for every occasion

|

Dipankar Gupta and Sreedeep

A photo essay

54

the polyphonic poet |

Madhavankutty Pillai

The art of Ranjit Hoskote

63

not people like us |

Rajeev Masand

Why Priyanka is peeved over a film on her life 26 may 2014

63

victory

the modi

The most audacious journey in the a historic finale as Narendra Modi,

nation

politics of India comes to a lone man on a mission...

Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

...inherits an India transformed by

his ideas of modernity ashish sharma

by s prasannarajan

H

TRIUMPH OF the WILL

istory semaphores the journey of the boldest in politics. As one such journey reaches its destination, India is a nation transformed. Enraged by the accumulated humiliations of a decade, the lost years, India has listened to a lone man on a mission, and now that he is where he has struggled to be, it is no longer politics as usual. India has shifted. The cozy certainties of yesterday have been swept aside by the velocity of his ascent. And no politician in this country has undertaken such a picaresque through the mind of a people who admired and feared him in equal measure. Narendra Damodardas Modi, the winner of India 2014, is the story of our time, a story in which the power of one man’s will merges with the possibilities of a nation still dreaming.

There he is, standing triumphant amidst the ruins of a regime that had lost India even before the election. The rareness of his story is that, this moment is not marked by the enormity of the humiliation suffered by those who deployed the worst adjectives to demonise him but by the mind of the winner. In a country where unconcealed ambition is frowned upon by moral harrumphers, he played out his passion for power with a kind of flamboyance that may have alienated the grandees in his own party and a section of Indians, but it was a measure of his confidence, of his belief in himself, of his ability to defy every barrier built on the way. It was an exceptional sight of a man taking control of, and shaping, his destiny against the heaviest odds; in the end, he convinced the doubters that it is not always the case that history makes use of smart leaders. The smartest makes use of history, as Modi, the man who came from nowhere, the man who changed the conversation, did.

That is why Modi in New Delhi is made possible by the Modi for whom the Capital of India was another planet, of entitlement and entrapment, till 16 May. For more than six decades of Independence, the highest seat of power was inaccessible—and incomprehensible—to those who didn’t belong here. Membership was accorded by committees and cabals, backroom consensus and bloodline affiliations—it was an insider’s trade. Modi was else-

6 open

where, not merely dreaming up his own Delhi, but challenging the limits of a political culture built on hierarchies and the wisdom of elders to achieve, or maybe even create, his own Delhi. This moment marks a cultural shift, the magnitude of which is unprecedented.

The making of one man and his belief system have become, for the first time in the political evolution of India, the national narrative of re-invention. A lesser man would not have gone beyond a mention in the glossary of political infamy. If it were someone other than Modi, he would have perished in the embers of Gujarat 2002. Modi maintained his balance even as the ground beneath him shook, for he was determined to travel far beyond the Sabarmati. In the first election he fought and won, the afterglow of 9/11 providing the backdrop, it was not development that he spoke, and it was not Gujarat that he was addressing—both were too obvious to be stressed. He was in a conversation with India, and he borrowed his metaphors from the global text of terror. It was his way of expanding his space in national consciousness. All the successive three elections he won in Gujarat were referendums on him, and by the time he achieved the hattrick in his home state, he was already India’s most popular politician, and the only one with an argument for change. He himself became the argument, he made himself inevitable for the party and the country.

26 May 2014

illustration Anirban Ghosh

His 12-year campaign for India was the most audacious project undertaken in India by a politician, but he had that knack, like Barack Obama circa 2008, to turn his biography into national destiny. He was his own Michelangelo, sculpting his personal mythology to perfection. He was his own Boswell, writing his legend in tune with the spirit of the times. When Candidate Modi was the only viable option for his party to regain India, it was the mark of a man who would make himself the only One. Soon, he would make himself indispensable to an India crying out for leadership. On Friday, more fabulous than fateful, the triumphant Modi wrote the first notation of a new India, and his name would acquire the status of being an adjective to a nation that took the most defining Right turn. In retrospect, the age of Atal Behari Vajpayee was a pause, a redeeming pause nevertheless, in the Centre-Leftist march of India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a brand new beginning for an India that was for long conditioned by the impulses of the Dynasty, which set the foundation of the socialist state. The loftiest part of Nehru’s nation-building was the creation of the New Man, socialist, sciHe was his own Michelangelo, sculpting entific and secular, resistant to religion and nation. The New Man was just anhis personal mythology to perfection. He was other socialist fantasy, which was cerhis own Boswell, writing his legend in tune tainly not a sign of national creativity.

Indira Gandhi’s India was more pragwith the spirit of the times matic and less lofty, but the socialist state remained intact. Rajiv Gandhi may have dreamt of the technological possibilities of twenty-first century India, but he was not that stretched from drawing rooms to boardrooms, from the one to repudiate the family enterprise in geneology the marketplace to the mean streets of sectarian India, a and ideology. The filler governments by the so-called nation is being reborn in the ideas of future. And this revFederalists only made the Left-leaning India more pro- olution is set to be remembered in an inspired—and vincial. Atal Behari Vajpayee, India’s first Right-wing inspiring—four-letter word: Modi.

So far, he was a national bestseller, manufactured and Prime Minister, deserved more than five years to build a Conservative India; it fell on misplaced triumphalism. marketed by himself. Today, he is a synonym for change But the brave attempts in the demolition of Soviet- that continues to be multiplied in the mind of India— vintage Third Worldism and well-entrenched anti-Amer- an India fast shedding the loose raiment of a socialist icanism put India on the right side of history—for a short state, and ready to be indulged by a leader driven by the while. After ten years of the Manmohan Singh embarrass- instincts of modernisation. It is the Right time to be in ment, India was ready for the redeemer. In a revolution the Modi Nation. n 26 May 2014

open www.openthemagazine.com 7

victor

the legend of

narendra damodardas modi

the man The Mind the mandate AND the mission

By PR RAMESH and ULLEKH NP

H

urricane Modi swept through the heartland and beyond, broke down caste and class barriers, and posted the first clear majority for any single political party since 1984. The landslide for the BJP—which won 282 seats on its own—has shifted the tectonic plates of Indian politics as the party secured its highest ever share of votes. Narendra Modi tapped the anger of young voters impatient for change. He harvested national despair, won them over, decimated the Congress and other dynasty-led entities and severely battered north Indian regional satraps who had for decades enjoyed national political clout disproportionate to their strength.

8 open

26 May 2014

INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/getty images

Verdict 2014 also saw a massive crystallisation of a panHindu vote bank under one umbrella for the first time.

The various caste groupings that got splintered and became captive vote banks for purveyors of identity politics became the vanguard of the Modi revolution. This curtailed the Muslim ‘veto’ in Indian elections. In the event that the BJP succeeds in consolidating its new support base in Uttar Pradesh—it won 73 of the 80 seats in the state—its competitors would find it tough to move forward. Modi invaded the social turfs of Mayawati and Mulayam Singh and shrank the Congress to two Lok Sabha constituencies in UP. “This is a rewriting of history. And you are part of it. We should all be proud,” Amit Shah, the BJP’s shrewd campaign manager and mastermind of the record tally for the BJP in UP, tells Open Echoing Modi’s promise in the runup to the polls of a ‘Congress mukt Bharat’, Shah says the national capital will no longer be in the hands of elites or

led the party’s most disastrous campaign in history—to the extent that he and his mother Sonia Gandhi are the only two Congress candidates to win in UP. Moreover, the leader of the Congress party in the Lok Sabha can’t play the Leader of the Opposition’s role because it has won fewer than the required 55 seats; it is now up to the discretion of the next Prime Minister to confer that status on a Congress leader. Back in the time of Jawaharlal Nehru, the then PM had granted AK Gopalan of the undivided CPI a similar special status. As opposed to the Congress, the BJP has made incursions into states that the Congress saw as bastions and helped allies such as the TDP arrest the growth of a Jagan Mohan Reddy-led YSR Congress in Seemandhra.

Unsurprisingly, among senior leaders of India’s Grand Old Party, only Jairam Ramesh, who is known to punch above his political weight, was seen chatting with TV anchors on the day of vote counting. The 4.30 pm press consagheer mahdi/India News Network

The last vestige of the Mandal legacy has been swept aside by the Modi revolution dynasties. It was Shah, Modi’s confidant, who played the pivotal role in the party’s UP sweep, converting euphoria over Modi into votes.

Modi, in his first response on 16 May to his party’s thumping victory, aimed his message at young Indians who want more jobs, better living conditions and higher economic growth, saying, “Achche din aane waale hain (good days are coming).” The electoral verdict, which spurred widespread celebrations by BJP workers, has turned three state governments—Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand—vulnerable, while a massive surge in favour of the BJP in Maharashtra, Assam and Delhi is expected to favour the saffron party in Assembly polls due later this year. The General Election results have also wiped out the Left, the dynasties of Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad, M Karunanidhi and Farooq Abdullah.

It also stamped out the Nitish Kumar-led JD-U and NCP. Interestingly, the only three state-level leaders who withstood the Modi wave are the AIADMK’s Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu, Trinamool Congress’ Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal and Biju Janata Dal’s Naveen Patnaik in Odisha.

While Modi is expected to lead a CEO-style governance model, the political legitimacy of the Nehru-Gandhi family, which promoted a diarchy over the past decade, has already come under question. The poll outcome is a slap on the face of the family, especially its scion and campaign chief Rahul Gandhi, who controlled the former Government from outside in whimsical ways, and has 10 open

26 May 2014

ference of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi lasted just two minutes, and the mother dissuaded the son from taking queries from reporters.

SUNSET ON DYNASTY

Long before counting began, senior ministers and party functionaries had made efforts to insulate Rahul Gandhi from humiliation. While Salman Khurshid and Jairam Ramesh said the election campaign was a “collective exercise”, Kamal Nath blamed the UPA Government for the defeat. “Results are the outcome of people’s perception of the Government’s functioning. Rahul Gandhi was never part of the Government,” he said. Translation: the accusatory finger should point at the man who occupied the corner room in South Block for the past 10 years, not at any resident of either 10 Janpath or 12 Tughlak Lane in the capital.

However, these feeble attempts of courtiers may not be enough to shield Rahul Gandhi from sniper fire. While the narrowing of his victory margin in the family pocketborough of Amethi advertised his poor connect even with his own constituents, the rout of the Congress across India underlined the diminished vote-catching ability of the dynasty. That the Gandhi family’s clout was waning steadily was evident months ago: thanks to the miserable performance of the party in assembly polls held in the Hindi belt late last year. While the BJP bettered its performance in the states it has controlled for the past 10 years—Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh—the Congress was pushed to the margins in Rajasthan and Delhi. “There were clear signs of the approval numbers of the family tanking in these elections,” according to Shah. “The idea of dynasty, in any case, is not compatible with the grammar of democratic polity.”

Even Rahul’s admirers concede that finding the right tone in this election has been tough for the chief campaigner of the Congress. He fell back on an emotional script centred on the sacrifices of his family, unaware that he was selling this message to an India with little or no memory of what he sought to glorify. After all, the last direct rule of the dynasty ended a quarter century ago.

The coming days will see the Congress leadership attract flak for its tone-deaf approach, a talking-down style and a belief that a single family and its friends alone know what’s good for India. By force of habit, Congressmen may not still directly target Rahul but those who assisted him in fashioning the party’s poll strategy. Collateral damages are certain: this defeat will undoubtedly stall Rahul’s organisational revamp. The family’s dependence on the old guard—sidelined by recent lateral entrants— would get heavier. The run-up to the election had seen Rahul Gandhi relying more on greenhorns than on those who ran the affairs of the Government, or even the party—such as Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel.

A BRAND NEW POLITICS

Modi, who mauled powerful regional satraps in states where the caste narrative marginalised national parties, showed that he has the wherewithal to beat them at their own game. In UP, for example, Modi was not just successful in consolidating ‘upper’ castes for the BJP, but also took apart the Samajwadi Party’s ‘backward’ caste vote bank and more or less obliterated Mayawati’s Dalit base, drawing their votes to the BJP, whose UP tally alone exceeds the Congress’ all-India figure.

By ending the supremacy of the SP and BSP, Modi has redefined the politics of UP, which has historically decided who gets to rule the country. The two state-level parties had contested UP’s Assembly polls of 1993 together to counter the BJP, which was then riding a Ram temple wave. Although they parted ways in 1995 and have been bitter enemies since, they have been the main political 26 May 2014

open www.openthemagazine.com 11

boy from vadnagar

young cadet His classmates say he was good in acting and debates

Narendra Modi as a teenager

rss to bjp Modi was admired for his organisational qualities

people first As an RSS pracharak, Modi travelled across Gujarat to meet people

players in the state.

The BJP has managed to strike the right caste balance in this election. It gave one-third of its tickets to numerically preponderant OBCs and signalled clearly that power would not remain in the hands of the party’s ‘upper’ caste leadership. This huge group of voters, it may be recalled, had deserted the BJP after Kalyan Singh, an OBC Lodh Rajput, left the party in the 1990s.

In Bihar, the BJP’s appeal to OBC voters that one of their own, Modi, ought to be India’s Prime Minister worked to its advantage. While Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s calculation that ending his party’s ties with the BJP would make him the state’s sole beneficiary of Muslim votes looked good on paper, it did not work out that way.

Instead, a consolidation of ‘upper’ caste, EBC and Dalit votes in NDA’s favour helped Modi trounce his rivals.

The new social umbrella that Modi has forged—‘upper’ castes, OBCs, MBCs and a sizeable section of Dalits— would give the BJP a lethal support base in any electoral combat. “Modi’s ‘backward caste’ image will not put off the ‘upper caste’ voter. The Modi brand has something for everyone. It is a big package,” says a BJP leader. His development mantra also helped in the consolidation of this omnibus constituency. “The younger generation shares the aspirations of a changing India. Caste identity is important, but addressing their demands is equally critical.

12 open

Here, Modi has been more successful than his competitors, as he has a proven track record,” says Dharmendra Pradhan of the BJP. The Modi typhoon that swept away BJP’s rivals in the Hindi heartland, home to a good chunk of minority voters, offers lessons for those who base their political calculus on the power of the so-called ‘Muslim veto’. It was this belief that prompted Nitish Kumar to snap ties with the BJP, encouraged the Congress to persist with a script that treated Modi as a monster, prompted Mulayam and his cohorts to communalise India’s Kargil War victory against Pakistan, and led politicos of non-saffron hues to crowd alleys leading to the Islamic seminary at Deoband in western Uttar Pradesh. To borrow from MJ Akbar, what they were seeking was not the community’s vote, but its veto to defeat Narendra Modi.

Ahead of the election, Modi had consistently maintained that he would not discriminate against members of India’s minority community. On his refusal to wear a skullcap during his Sadbhavana Yatra, he has held firm.

In an interview in the midst of the election season, he said, “If wearing a cap were to be seen as a symbol of unity, then I never saw Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel or Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru wearing such caps… actually, a bad practice of appeasement has crept into Indian politics. My job is to respect all religions and traditions... I live 26 May 2014

India Today Images

incognito Modi during the Emergency

my tradition and respect the traditions of others. That’s why I cannot fool people by posing for photographs wearing a cap.”

AN AMAZING Journey

“From pariah to Prime Minister! This is nothing short of a miracle,” exults a senior BJP leader, referring to Modi’s cliff-hanger of a journey from the quiet backwaters of Gujarat’s Vadnagar to Delhi’s highly fortified 7 Race Course Road residence.

In the shanties that serve tea along the road to the village-town where Modi was born in 1950, people are used to being wonder-struck. They have been talking animatedly about various heroic tales of the BJP heavyweight from his childhood ever since he became Gujarat’s Chief Minister some 13 years ago. Some of these tales have become part of Modi Mythology, such as the story of the teenage Narendra’s escape from the jaws of a crocodile, which echoes the childhood experience of Jagatguru Adi Shankaracharya, the great Hindu seer who lived and died in Varanasi.

HK Mehta, Vadnagar resident and brother of local BJP leader Sunilbhai Mehta, isn’t interested in “these ballads”, as he calls them. But he agrees that the world is full of miracles and coincidences, “ones you cannot fathom 26 May 2014

with the human mind”, as he says with a philosophical flourish. “What is more important here is how Modi became such a prominent leader from being born into poverty and neglect. You know it doesn’t happen often that a person who belongs to a community such as his makes such a big mark in life. He has made us all proud beyond explanation,” says Mehta, who is in his seventies, with youthful vigour.

“Modi will make the institution of the PMO stronger than it ever was. I noticed his determination long years ago,” says Mehta, who never knew Modi as a child though he has lived close to the railway station where the leader as a young man sold commuters tea, as well as Bhagvatacharya Narayanacharya High School, where Modi studied. “Now people come up with stories… I don’t know about them. Modi was born to the Teli-Ghanchi community [traditionally, makers of cooking oil], and the rise of a man from such a status to that of India’s Prime Minister is unbelievable,” he avers as his eyes light up.

Mehta first met Modi when he gave a speech “some 25 years ago”. By then, Modi had left home for good, wandered the Himalayas, knew Swami Vivekananda’s quotations by heart, grown a beard on the advice of a saint, became a full-time member of the RSS and had his nowfamous 56-inch chest. “I looked at his forehead and I knew he was a born leader,” Mehta recalls.

Seated under a tree near the railway station, next to a dusty narrow road, Abdul, who was Modi’s junior by a year in school, remembers him as an “active kid” and a

The Muslim veto is dead.

A Pan-Hindu constituency has emerged in India good swimmer at the nearby Sharmishtha Lake. “He was from a poor family like many of us,” remembers Abdul.

Being poor and ‘low’ caste left him largely anonymous as a child, says Mehta. On his part, Prem Chand, a Vadnagar resident in his eighties, says that nobody in those days—when Modi was a child in Vadnagar, which is just over 100 km from his current bungalow in Gandhinagar—had any great ambition other than to pursue their parents’ occupation. The tea that Modi sold was at his father Damodardas’ shop at a single-gauge platform in Vadnagar, and he would take breaks from classes just before trains rolled in. Unlike most of his peers— which included his five siblings—in this sleepy semi-rural outpost, Modi was ambitious and had no qualms about it. He was different from other children his age: he was only eight years old when he started attending RSS shakhas. He was deeply affected by India’s wars of 1962 and 1965 and wanted to do something for his country. open www.openthemagazine.com 13

Under the spell of Swami Vivekananda’s teachings, he finally left home when he was barely 18. This was around the time that he was married to Yashodaben in accordance with a tradition of childhood betrothal still common in his community. Modi travelled to the Belur Math in West Bengal and beyond, destined never to live in Vadnagar again.

Another senior BJP leader says that Modi is a ‘complex’ individual because “you never know how he plans his moves”. But what is transparent about him, this leader says, is that he loves people “who deliver”. Modi could be your friend only as long as you’re a doer, he explains. “He appreciates only merit and this will be very clear in the months to come. Which is why he succeeds and climbs over all hurdles,” he says, emphasising that this “detachment of sorts” sets him apart from most politicians who have permanent friends and enemies.

Modi has remained invulnerable to personal attack.

“He has been able to disconnect himself from vicious and malicious rumours about his character. Which is why he has been able to survive the no-holds-barred campaign against him within India and abroad,” says the BJP leader, alluding to the US denial of a visa to Modi and what he calls “stupid” comments by academics of the stature of Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen. “Modi, I can tell you, is unperturbed by all vitriolic comments about him because of his RSS background and his ascetic past,” says this leader.

This emotional aloofness—or coldness—that some of his close associates refer to as “extreme defiance” has surprised even Modi’s parents, who had expected him to live a happy married life in Vadnagar, only to see him return from a self-imposed exile of two years in 1970 to tell his mother Hiraben, now 94, that he was away “in the Himalayas”. Modi had been associated closely with the Ramakrishna Mission, both in West Bengal and Rajkot, in Gujarat, where an ascetic, Swami Atmasthananda, advised him not to become a Mission monk, insisting that his calling lay elsewhere. According to Modi’s biographer Andy Marino, the BJP leader met Atmasthananda last year at the Belur Math to thank him for that advice.

THE WINNING STRATEGY

In hindsight, it was Modi’s induction to the BJP Parliamentary Board, despite opposition from a few party leaders, that set the stage for his PM candidacy.

However, it was the rallies that he planned across the country—through last year’s state elections—that forced a presidential style election on the Congress, which had named Rahul as vice-president and declared that the Nehru-Gandhi scion would lead the then ruling party into the electoral arena. Though the Congress didn’t name Rahul as its PM candidate, the scion, with no experience whatsoever of governance, paled in comparison with Modi.

14 open

The Congress vice-president’s reluctance to plunge into the campaign wholeheartedly didn’t go down well with those Congress workers who resented the fact that the 43-year-old often upped and left midway to enjoy dinners at Delhi’s posh malls. The poor image of the scamscarred Manmohan Singh Government and the UPA’s dismal failure to project its achievements, too, proved costly for Rahul. The BJP’s meticulously executed ad campaign—as opposed to the Congress’ poorly managed one—helped the saffron party stay ahead all through the race, especially on the back of ‘hit’ slogans such as ‘Abki Baar Modi Sarkar’, ‘Log Kehte Hain Modi Aanewaala Hai’ and ‘Achche Din Aane Waale Hain’. Modi himself addressed 437 rallies, took part in 5,827 public interface events and travelled over 300,000 km across 25 states in his attempt to reach out to citizens everywhere, in what was arguably the most extensive outreach programme undertaken by a single leader in Indian electoral campaign history.

Political pundits aver that Modi deliberately took the fight to the doorsteps of regional leaders as well, though he could have done without it, to drive home the message that his was a nationwide campaign and not restricted to seats where the BJP and Congress were in mutual battle.

“Modi hitting out at Mamata Banerjee and Naveen Patnaik may not have had a huge impact in states where they are strong, like West Bengal or Odisha, but his statements did encourage voters to believe that his was a highvoltage pan-India campaign. And this was intentional,” says Pradhan. “Modi has always had tremendous appeal as a ‘man of action’ and we wanted to make the most of that perception.”

Even Congress leaders in Gujarat subscribe to that view. One of them, based in Gandhinagar, says that the BJP anointed Modi the Chief Minister of Gujarat in late 2001 on account of his popularity among BJP workers of the state. “I am not an admirer of the man or his ways,” says the Congress leader, “But he was always regarded as a no-nonsense manager of the party machinery.”

As in everything associated with Modi, there was plenty of drama involved in appointing him CM in 2001.

Atal Behari Vajpayee, then Prime Minister, was worried that the party’s Keshubhai Patel had earned a bad reputation as a nepotist CM. Both Vajpayee and Advani were upset about setbacks in municipal elections and other local polls. Modi, who was in Delhi, got a call from Vajpayee on 1 October 2001, asking for a meeting. In the evening, when the two met, the then PM asked him to take over the reins of the Gujarat government from Patel. Modi, despite having been banished from the state, used to receive huge rounds of applause at party meetings held in Gujarat, much to the anguish of his detractors. On the day he took over as CM, 7 October 2001, thousands of party workers celebrated his ascent with gusto and looked upon him as someone who would clean up the mess the state government was in. He didn’t disappoint them.

26 May 2014

INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP

blessings Narendra Modi being blessed by his mother Hira Ba with a teeka in Gandhinagar on 16 May

Maximum Governance Triumphant at the Centre, Modi is likely to have a ‘thin’ team to help run India’s new Government. BJP leaders such as Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Amit Shah and Suresh Soni are expected to land plum posts. Others who could get key positions include JP Nadda, Dharmendra Pradhan and Sushil Modi. Modi-baiters within the BJP are unlikely to be assigned important portfolios, a person close to the matter discloses, emphasising that Modi is looking at reshuffling the structure of the Union Cabinet to bring allied departments under a common umbrella.

For instance, the Ministries of Commerce and External Affairs may be placed under the charge of a single minis26 May 2014

The BJP won 73 of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh. Much of the credit for this victory goes to Modi’s aide Amit Shah ter; the logic is that such a measure will help boost trade ties. As Open goes to press, BJP sources are cagey about the details of Modi’s other plans.

“Modi has won on his own and without doubt he will have ultimate control,” says this source close to Modi, adding that the poll triumph is stunning enough to silence all his critics within the party. It is a core team of Singh, Jaitley, Nitin Gadkari and Shah that is expected to take decisions on government formation, he adds. “Let’s not forget that this is an election fought over a single man and his charisma, and he would want to have people of his choice to work with him to deliver promises he has made to the people of this country. He has survived a test of fire and all those character-assassination campaigns,” open www.openthemagazine.com 15

Biju BORO/AFP

masquerade ball BJP workers in Guwahati celebrate Modi’s victory

he says without elaboration.

The Congress, since achieving power in May 2004, had unleashed an unsparing campaign to pin on Modi the communal riots in Gujarat that followed the burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims in Godhra on 27 February 2002. Various activist groups have also investigated his alleged inaction while violence flared up and engulfed some cities in the state. Later, he came under sharp attack over the alleged misuse of police forces to organise ‘fake encounters’ and win popular favour by constantly invoking the ravages of Islamist terror. While Modi loyalists and partymen say that leaders stung by Modi’s rising popularity were behind such rumours, activists such as Pravin Mishra forecast that the long arm of the law will finally tap him on the shoulder “despite all the support of corporates who are beneficiaries of the sops he has doled out to them”. BJP leaders laugh off such comments.

“Every Congressman and his uncle has been saying this for so long. It is so boring to keep intervening in the judicial process,” says a dismissive Pradhan. “Modi has let nothing, not even party affiliations, affect his efforts to bring development to the state of Gujarat. He didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, and when it came to reaching his 16 open

It is the Congress’ worst performance ever—the party has not won a single seat in seven states goal, he never bothered about ruffling feathers or antagonising those who stood in his way,” he explains. BJP leaders have long argued that the deployment of forces against rioters in 2002 was much swifter than in previous riots; and that several Hindus also having died in police firing demonstrates the alacrity of the state administration. Besides, they argue, Sangh affiliates that tend to instigate anti-minority violence have been brought to book and systematically sidelined in the state since 2002.

Fighting the 2002 demon has been no mean task for Modi, especially in its immediate aftermath. On Prime Minister Vajpayee’s special plane to Goa—where he was to attend a conclave of the BJP’s National Executive Council starting on 12 April 2002—the BJP patriarch discussed a demand raised by the TDP’s Chandrababu Naidu, an NDA ally: that Modi be sacked as the CM of Gujarat. The leaders Vajpayee consulted included Jaswant Singh, his NSA Brajesh Mishra and Arun Shourie. By the time the plane touched down in Goa, the decision was clear: Modi had to go.

Modi, ever the astute politician, knew that the odds were stacked against him. But he was determined to overcome them: he tendered his resignation as CM to the 26 May 2014

Council, offering to work for the party organisation. No one any less tenacious could have overcome such stiff obstacles, within and outside, recalls a BJP leader. But Modi did. His ‘resignation’ was rejected by the BJP’s high-level body. He was backed to the hilt by N Venkaiah Naidu, who was party president at the time, apart from Jaitley and the late Pramod Mahajan. “He almost went down, people thought. But he didn’t,” says a BJP leader who was present at the Goa conclave.

Early ASSAULT

form of duplicity that exposes the BJP leader’s diabolical nature—which he claims was “on full display in the case of all leaders such as the late Haren Pandya, Vaghela, and Advani, his former mentor”. Adds Mishra, “Modi is unpredictable and ruthless and never has a permanent friend. He has used people for his gain.”

BJP leaders deny such charges, insisting that Modi is ambitious and has never tried to hide it. “He is a very taskoriented person… After all, being ambitious is not bad. It is good,” says the second BJP leader, echoing Ayn Rand’s philosophy of the virtue of selfishness.

Now, for the next Prime Minister of India, the race to this post began long ago. Until as recently as December 2012, Modi was seen as ‘not yet ready’ for the top post’s candi- The most defining moment of Modi’s career was the tridacy by many senior leaders of the 34-year-old Right- umph of the December 2012 Gujarat Assembly polls wing party. An Ahmedabad-based Congress leader says when the BJP won 115 of the 182 seats, in a hat-trick. he secretly admires Modi for his “single-minded pursuit Though there were murmurs of opposition from a handof orchestrating his rise and working non-stop towards ful of BJP leaders—including Sushma Swaraj and othachieving his goal”. He says that just when it looked ers—in pitching Modi for PM, within a few months, the his power was about to slip away, he got more of it. He RSS veered round to the idea that Modi as a PM candidate concedes that it was after his re-election in 2012 that Modi made sense, politically. took the national centrestage. “Until then,” he adds, “he The most vilified leader of the BJP soon emerged as the faced challenges from within his party, both in Gujarat biggest hope for the comatose party, which had been out and the rest of India. You [in the media] might say that of power at the Centre for more than eight years and been Central agencies were after his life. What about his buffeted by crises in such states as Karnataka. It had done own party leaders and rivals? Why is nobody talking very badly in Uttar Pradesh and the entire north of the country in the 2009 General Election as well as in several about it?”

True, much loathed by some and much loved by many state elections. The NDA, the coalition it led, also saw others, Modi is as famous as he is controversial. While his huge cracks. detractors, within and outside his party, contend that he Then the RSS prevailed. Modi’s well-wishers in the parwas desperate to become more and more powerful to hide ty, including Jaitley, managed to convince the RSS top the ‘sins of his past’, a reference to the 2002 Gujarat riots brass that Modi alone could bring together a by-now disunder his watch, his admirers argue that he is where he parate BJP and breathe new life into the organisation by is now despite relentless efforts to vilify him. Apart from energising cadres. Mohan Bhagwat, whose father attempts to corner Modi over his alleged inaction in 2002 Madhukar Rao Bhagwat was Modi’s mentor in the RSS, and the reportedly numerous ‘staged encounter killings was until then insistent that the Gujarat strongman reof terrorists’ in the state over the past decade, there have habilitate his rival within the party, Sanjay Joshi. Modi been sustained efforts by a section of leaders within his argued that no such ‘rehabilitation’ was possible because Joshi had tirelessly campaigned against him in the past, party to contain his national ambitions.

Modi’s so-called ‘stubborn nature’ has meant that he is to the extent of destabilising the party’s state unit along either wildly popular or intensely hated within his own with Vaghela. Modi never forgave Joshi, who was allegparty. In his early years in the BJP, he was aligned with edly responsible for rumours that strained Modi’s ties Gujarat’s former Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel, a man with former CM Keshubhai Patel. Patel was away in the who later became a bitter opponent of his. He had waged US when Vaghela flew 47 MLAs to a Khajuraho hotel and a protracted battle for supremacy in Gujarat with dethroned Patel with the blessings of the likes of Joshi.

Shankersinh Vaghela, now a Congress leader who was a Finally, Bhagwat agreed that Modi should be the party’s close friend of Modi in the 1970s.

According to an apocryphal story, Modi once sneaked into a jail in Bhavnagar where Vaghela was lodged during the Emergency in disguise to meet him and The only three leaders who withstood other RSS volunteers. While his friends the Modi wave are AIADMK’s Jayalalithaa, in the BJP see this ability to “adapt and detach himself from permanent alliances” Trinamool Congress’ Mamata Banerjee and as a hallmark of Modi’s political acumen, BJD’s Naveen Patnaik critics such as Pravin Mishra see it as a

DEFINING MOMENTS

26 May 2014

open www.openthemagazine.com 17

prime ministerial candidate.

Jaitley found support from an unexpected quarter, from party president Singh, in backing Modi’s candidacy. By then, Modi had kicked off a campaign on his own, starting with his speech in Hindi on 20 December 2012, in a departure of sorts from the customary speech in Gujarati, emphasising that his focus of activity had shifted from Gujarat to the entire country.

Once the RSS was convinced of Modi’s potential as India’s PM, Jaitley and others took the lead in persuading even the sulking paterfamilias LK Advani, who wanted to lead the BJP’s Lok Sabha campaign again. The lawyerpolitician argued with Advani that going for a presidential form of election, pitting Modi against Rahul, would pull in more votes and seats for the saffron party. With Suresh Soni of the RSS parleying with the likes of Advani on the issue, a solution seemed in sight.

Finally, in June last year at the Goa conclave of the party, Modi was named ‘chief campaigner’ for the 2014 election. Advani skipped the meeting, citing ill-health and sparking off public mirth on social media (‘What did Advani sing to Modi? You give me fever’). Within months, the Gujarat Chief Minister, who had used ‘the Gujarat model of development’ as a poll plank in his much-touted Sadbhawana Yatra, was named the party’s prime ministerial candidate. By then, he had already chosen a number of technocrats and wonderkids—such as Rajesh Jain, Arvind Gupta, Prashant Kishor, Pratik Doshi and others—to run the BJP campaign. “He is very particular about discipline and getting results. He is very hardworking. In that sense, he is a perfect product of the RSS. How can RSS not have lapped up his candidacy at such a crucial time?” asks a BJP leader.

Incidentally, another turning point in Modi’s life was his decision to get closely involved with the RSS and becoming less active at the Ramakrishna Mission. Piqued by constant questioning about his personal life by his neighbours in Vadnagar, he stopped visiting his home village and started working at a canteen in Ahmedabad run by his uncle. Soon, while he was in his mid-twenties, he moved into Hedgewar Bhavan in Ahmedabad where one of his early mentors, ‘Vakil Sahib’ Lakshmanrao Inamdar, had been staying with some 15 others. Modi made tea and cooked for the RSS campaigners, besides mopping the nine rooms in the Bhavan and washing his and Vakil Sahib’s clothes. By 1978, Modi had already become a sambhaag pracharak, a regional organiser, working in Surat, Kheda, Valsad and Vadodara, travelling widely across north India, reading voraciously, and holding debates.

Prahalad Patel, who taught Modi Sanskrit in school, vouches that Modi was interested in debate and theatre at a young age though he was an average student. Notably, in 1987, Modi, by now an astute organiser who had befriended BJP strongman Advani, successfully steered a surprise poll triumph for the BJP against the Congress in the Ahmedabad Municipal polls in which the party won two-thirds of all seats. Advani, who inducted Modi into 18 open

the BJP from the RSS, was to play a crucial role in Modi’s ascent in the organisation despite stiff opposition from the likes of Vaghela who even got Modi banished from the state several times, first in 1992 and then in 1995.

With such political pushes and pulls playing in the background, Modi went on to succeed as a party leader in charge of states such as Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir from 1996 to 2001, the year he was named Chief Minister of Gujarat. In an interview, he once referred to those years as the ‘most productive phase’ of his life. It is no coincidence that this was the period that saw the exit of his avowed rival Vaghela from the BJP.

SCRIPTED TO PERFECTION

The RSS needed to stay relevant at a time when more than half of India’s population was under the age of 25 and 66 per cent under 35. For someone who had gone gung-ho about the ‘the immense possibilities of computers’ as early as the mid-1990s, Modi was seen as a suitable boy. His economic model of development had already been feted by the likes of globalisation buffs such as Jagdish Bhagwati. Vibrant Gujarat, a showpiece event meant to sell Gujarat to global investors, had become a success thanks partly to the global PR agency hired for the purpose, Apco. The script for his ascent was ready with Sadbhavan Yatra, launched ahead of the 2012 state polls, to hardsell himself as a doer and hard-edged leader who could preside over India’s growth in the 21st century. The Tata Group, one of India’s biggest conglomerates, had started operations in Gujarat after troubles in West Bengal. Ratan Tata, its then chairman, had been reluctant to join hands with a much-maligned Modi. An official who had accompanied Modi to the airport to receive the Tata honcho recalls how Modi broke the ice. “I know that you do not like me enough. You just come and do whatever you want to,” Modi said, positioning himself as the flagbearer of a ‘modernisation’ drive envisaged by the RSS’s Deen Dayal Upadhyay, one of the most prominent leaders of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the BJP’s forerunner, and an icon for the likes of Modi.

Modi and team also scrutinised the strengths and weaknesses of the Congress-led coalition and had consulted, as early as in May 2012, foreign PR agents who had worked in the Obama Campaign on the likely strategies of the UPA. The rest, as we now know, is history.

THE ROLLER COASTER

“Modi’s landslide victory in Varanasi could be a rude shock to many of our journalists who were talking about a tough fight in a ‘three-cornered contest’,” says a BJP leader based in Varanasi, where Modi, taking a break from his whirlwind tour of the country, spent just eight hours and 40 minutes to canvass votes for himself.

Another BJP leader calls statements that have emanated from Varanasi about ‘tough battles’ and a ‘Modi versus 26 May 2014

ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP

jubilation Amit Shah flanked by Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi

Kejriwal faceoff’ as the rambling of people who often go by announcements and not facts. Modi was leaps ahead, he says, because of his preparations. Modi had begun his campaign long before he was named to the post by the BJP, he avers. “Winning over corporates, appealing to farmers, striking a chord with the middle classes and the younger generation through meetings in colleges, etcetera, over the past few years were all part of that comprehensive campaign,” adds this leader.

Modi also understood very clearly that having a team to assess data from polling booths across the country was crucial to ensure that the BJP had an edge. A north Indian constituency for Modi to contest was also chosen more than a year in advance. The logic of Modi’s contesting Varanasi was not only that it’s a city holy to Hindus, but also that Modi’s war-room led by Amit Shah anticipated 26 May 2014

The polls also wiped out the Left, the dynasties of Lalu Prasad, M Karunanidhi, Ajit Singh and Farooq Abdullah that his candidacy would help the BJP gain seats across Poorvanchal, an entire belt that sprawls across eastern UP and Bihar.

Simultaneously, Operation Target the Youth began in right earnest. In February last year, just over a month after he won the polls in Gujarat—and months before he was named campaign chief by his party—Modi took his message to key campuses in highly televised events. He addressed students and faculty of Delhi University’s Shri Ram College of Commerce and harped on the need for good governance in the country. Similarly, within a month of his nomination as BJP campaign spearhead, he spoke to students at Pune’s Fergusson College and stole the thunder by discussing threadbare ‘modernisation of education’. His talk drew much applause, even though it came within days of his controversial remark that the open www.openthemagazine.com 19

10 Things to Do 1

2

Tackle runaway inflation Taming the monster of inflation will be the first

priority of the new Government at the Centre. The Government’s attention will be on removing bottlenecks in the supply chain. Modi has also been talking about a price stabilisation fund. In the medium and long run, the Government is expected to plan special agricultural zones closer to cities. Lowering inflation will provide elbowroom for an interest rate reduction.

3

Environmental & other clearances expect every proposal

to be put though transparent vetting and every decision explained. Modi himself has declared that there will be no room for ministerial discretion—something that has been coming in the way of key projects. Time delays have led to high costs. So a responsive administration could effect change.

6

Focus on agriculture

7

Run a slim, smart government

9

Use performance audits

4

24X7 power supply has been the centrepiece of Modi’s economic pitch. The Government is expected to come out with a new policy that takes diverse factors into account to ensure an optimal energy mix for the country. It could also offer fiscal incentives for projects in the solar, wind and biomass sectors.

Power projects caught in red tape can hope for immediate relief and revival.

Simplify taxation

5

The UPA government’s at-

tempt to levy retrospective taxation has harmed India’s investment climate. Since the new Government will have the onus of rebooting the investment cycle and reassuring investors that India remains an attractive place for business, a tribunal will be set up to deal with disputes in a time-bound manner.

Investments in minor irrigation,

seed innovation and market linkages will go up under the new Government.

Expect swift steps to address the issue of deterioration of soil.

Efficiency and not just seniority will

decide promotion to key posts in the Government. The new dispensation can be expected to bring in talent from outside government circles to handle key functions. There will be regular performance appraisal of officials.

Real-time performance audits by leveraging technology will be instituted. Wasteful spending will end. If a project cannot be revived, its funding will stop. Expect zero-base budgeting and goal-prioritised investments.

20 open

Supply enough energy

10

New jobs, better skills expect work to begin on knowledge cit-

ies. Modi has maintained that to offer better job opportunities, the country needs to focus on human resource and skill development. Technocrats are expected to oversee this exercise.

NREGA could be converted into a skill-development programme.

8

Reform the role of government The Government will

become an enabler of private initiative and act as a facilitator. The Centre is expected to play the role of a referee, not be a player in the Indian economy. Modi has declared ‘minimum government and maximum governance’ as his guiding principle.

Make housing affordable expect work to begin on the Government’s

promise of building homes for Rs 4 lakh a unit in rural areas and for Rs 7 lakh in urban areas. The BJP manifesto had promised to provide affordable homes to at least 500 million people in India.

26 May 2014

raul irani

pain he felt after the Gujarat riots was how one would feel if a puppy came under a car’s wheel. His popularity among the upper and middle-classes continued to rise despite charges of a ‘fascist’ style of functioning—such as having Facebook users hauled off to police stations for making comments against him. There were ‘alarmist’ cries that if Modi became PM, India would be back to the days of Samizdat, the Russian expression for the dissemination of censored literature through undercover documents.

MIND READER

Getting close confidant Amit Shah, who is expected to play a crucial role in the dispensation, as party in-charge of Uttar Pradesh was a milestone in the Modi campaign for 2014 in more ways than one.

Having lost no election under his supervision, this 49-year-old was BJP President Rajnath Singh’s nominee for the post, not Modi’s. But Modi stood up to defend Shah when a few senior leaders such as Swaraj opposed the nomination. Until then, Modi had not backed Shah directly at party fora. The moment he did it, the opposition melted away. “How long The leader of the Congress in the Lok can you back this man?” Swaraj had asked before.

Sabha can’t become the leader of the Targeting Shah was also a way of targetOpposition because it has won fewer than ing Modi, and with all his political cunning, Modi recognised it only too well. the required 55 seats—it is now up to the Open had earlier reported that key discretion of the next PM to confer that Cabinet ministers in the Congressled UPA regime had hatched a conspiracy status on a Congress leader to nail Shah in a ‘fake encounter’ case as part of an effort to neutralise Modi ahead of the General Election. However, the CBI chief, who was solicited for his ‘cooperation’, refused to law minister Pradeep Singh Jadeja says Modi deserves the credit for making the most of Shah’s abilities—in batterplay ball.

When Shah arrived in Uttar Pradesh last year, the par- ing the Congress inch by inch in Gujarat, first by chalty organisation was in the doldrums with the top leader- lenging the grand old party’s hegemony over rural banks ship cut off from the grassroots-level organisation. and sport bodies. Of the 28 elections—to the state Reviving the party was a huge challenge. It was then Assembly and various local bodies—that Shah has that Shah backed the ‘antidote’ that was suggested by a fought since 1989, he has not lost a single one. “This assofew leaders: Modi as the BJP’s candidate from Varanasi. ciation [between Modi and Shah] is going to get thicker Shah acted swiftly, appointing committees at booth now. After all, the credit for the stellar performance in UP levels and travelling to the country’s hinterland to get goes to Shah,” says the first BJP leader. Shah, according to feedback from the lowest units of the party. The BJP, sources, will also rein in the organisation as Modi plans which won only 10 seats last time in the country’s most to forge ahead with India’s modernisation.

From the grimy railway platforms of Vadnagar to the populous state that accounts for more Lok Sabha seats than any other, wanted to post its top score ever this grandeur of Raisina Hill, the pinnacle of the country’s political power, it has been such a long, lone journey for time around.

Shah, now 49, was 17 when he first met Modi. Gujarat’s Narendra Damodardas Modi. n 26 May 2014

open www.openthemagazine.com 21

cut

Minimum Cabinet Maximum governance The case for a downsized administration Dhiraj Nayyar

N

arendra Modi’s promise of ‘minimum government, maximum governance’ will be tested just moments after he takes his oath of office. How? By the number of ministers who follow him to take their oath of office. The UPA had a bloated ministerial team of 71, with 28 in the Cabinet, 11 Ministers of State with independent charge, and 32 other Ministers of State.

The size of Manmohan Singh’s Council of Ministers was close to the upper bound of 79 (one-tenth of the combined strength of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, which is 793). The UPA’s many cooks spoilt the broth of governance. Modi needs to start on a leaner, meaner note.

It isn’t only about downsizing the numbers. It is equally about imparting ‘maximum’ coherence to governance. Consider the impact of combining the Ministries of Power, Petroleum and Natural Gas, Coal and Renewable Energy (and throwing in control of India’s Nuclear Power Corporation) to create a unified Ministry of Energy. It would, of course, reduce the number of ministers needed from four to one, and contain the associated bureaucracy to a manageable size. But it would also enable a coordinated policy framework to tackle India’s greatest crisis: the country’s lack of energy (chiefly electricity).

Under the current set up, separate ministries often work at cross purposes. It is the Power Ministry’s responsibility to enhance the country’s power generation capacity. But putting up additional capacity means little unless there is sufficient fuel to keep power plants running. Under UPA II, existing power plants lay idle because of an acute shortage of coal and natural gas, the two main fuels. And the Power Ministry was powerless to do anything about it. The Coal Ministry was too busy protecting the turf of Coal India Ltd (CIL), the country’s monopoly producer and supplier of coal.

While CIL makes handsome profits for its Ministry to show off, it does so because it faces no competition. It has no incentive to dig out more coal to make up the almost 100 million tonnes of annual shortage, leaving bulk consumers either deprived or dependent on imports. Ensuring sufficient power supply is not CIL’s or the Coal Ministry’s problem.

During the UPA II’s tenure, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas tied itself in knots over determining the right price for natural gas. In the process, it ensured that natural gas producers, whether in the private or public sector, had no incentive to enhance production of this vital energy resource, starving power generation plants. Since it is not the responsibility of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry to ensure adequate power generation, it can afford to dither endlessly over the pricing of gas.

Now, if the responsibility of framing policies for coal, natural gas and power were held by the same ministry, it would mean a goal-oriented approach that ensures that power plants are not starved of input fuels like coal and natural gas. The Centre’s entire energy policy would be framed in a way to smoothen out problems and prevent turf wars that inhibit solutions. Adding the Renewable Energy Ministry—which has no role and rather limited funds as a standalone department— and Nuclear Power Corporation would mean that the challenge of Climate Change can also be addressed by a comprehensive energy plan. A set proportion of India’s total power requirement could be drawn from clean, nonfossil-fuel sources. Thus, setting up a Ministry of Energy would be a perfect example of ‘minimum government, maximum governance’, and it would certainly help the next Government deliver 24x7 power to the entire country.

There is another domain where there is potential for a consolidation of ministries. Modi could consider following the global best prac-

To function efficiently and effectively, there is no reason for the Government to retain more than 15 portfolios

22 open

26 May 2014

tice by merging the minisgiven that rural developtries of Railways, Roads ment is so closely linked and Highways, Shipping with the modernisaand Civil Aviation into a tion of agriculture and unified Ministry of agro-processing indusTransport. This would tries. At the moment, minimise government the Ministry of Rural and maximise goverDevelopment simply nance in a manner slightpresides over various dole ly different from the enerprogrammes which should gy example. There are, after in any case be replaced with all, no obvious turf issues productive government inbetween the different transvestment, primarily in agriculport ministries. ture, which is a sector that emThat said, it would be useful for ploys India’s poorest citizens. a single Ministry of Transport to It would also be prudent to considformulate an integrated transport er a merger of the Ministry of Communications (which looks after telepolicy, which can in particular propercom and posts), the Ministry of Information ly weigh the importance that must be given to aviation, roads and rail as means of Technology and the Ministry of Information transport. But the real advantage of rolling and Broadcasting. The latter has a questionable four ministries into one is to reduce the counrole in a liberalised media environment. It spends ter-productive role that individual ministries most of its time controlling the State broadcaster, play in micro-managing the sectors they overDoordarshan. see. For better outcomes, a ministry should only Of course, consolidation of ministries isn’t the formulate policy, and not fix tariffs and run comonly way to downsize government. There are some panies like in the present structure. The Railways ministries that have clearly outlived their utility, should be corporatised and run by professional like the Ministries of Steel and Textiles—relics of managers. Tariffs and issues of competition the Licence Raj when the Government would fix must be handed over to an independent quotas for production—which should simply be regulator. Similarly, in the aviation sector, there abolished. This act would send a powerful message is no need for the Ministry to run Air-India or of lean governance. regulate competition among airlines. The conThere is no reason for the next Government to struction of roads has suffered because the conretain any more than 15 portfolios, each handled by a cerned ministry has got too involved in laying Cabinet minister: Home, Defence, Finance, External down procedures and micro-managing bidding Affairs, Energy, Transport, Environment and Climate processes. Again, that should be left to an indepenChange, Commerce and Industry, dent regulator that can function without Communications and Infotech, Agriculture and Rural Development, Human Resource Development, political pressure. The Ministry of Shipping Health, Law, Tourism, Culture and Sports and Urban should not be running inefficient public sector Development. ports. Instead, a unified ministry ought to lay illustration Anirban Ghosh The Council of Ministers could accommodate anothdown a roadmap for the privatisation of ports so er 15 members as Ministers of State or Deputy Ministers. In that India’s trade gets a big boost.

A unified Transport Ministry can also safeguard crucial in- some of the newly consolidated ministries, Ministers of State frastructure sectors from meddlesome political influence. would have serious work to do for a change.

The challenge is political. Can Narendra Modi resist the presThere will be plenty of scope for policymaking but considerably reduced scope for patronage, rent-seeking and misman- sure that may be exerted by party MPs and allies to hand them agement. Overall, it would help achieve Modi’s aim of maxi- ministries? It is this system of patronage—with its scant regard for merit and emphasis on region, caste and other parochial mum governance with minimum government. considerations—that has led to a proliferation of ministries and departments and the unwieldy system of government the here are other ministries at the Centre that can be concountry currently suffers. solidated too. There is no reason to have separate departIf Mr Modi is a truly transformational leader, he will begin ments for Industrial Policy, Heavy Industry, Public Enterprises his first day at the country’s helm with a lean and efficient and Micro-Small and Medium Enterprises. They should all be Council of Ministers. n merged, along with the Ministry of Mines, into the Ministry Dhiraj Nayyar is CEO of Think India Foundation, of Commerce and Industry. There is a strong case to comand editor-at-large, Firstpost bine the ministries of Agriculture and Rural Development,

T

26 May 2014

open www.openthemagazine.com 23

diplomacy

illustration Anirban Ghosh

SALUTE THE RISING SUN The new PM should respond positively to Shinzo Abe’s offer of broad strategic cooperation Edward Luttwak

E

xcept for its 1947 decision to

leave the ungentlemanly intelligence business to the seedy backroom boys—who were not even allowed the title ‘Department’ for their central intelligence agency—the US State Department’s deepest regret is its long-revoked denial of a visitor visa to Narendra Modi. That is not just because of Modi’s ascent, but much more because Washington knows that he might transform the entire Asian balance of power.

Normally, no individual could possibly do that—not even a Genghis Khan or Timur, if they too were as subject to all the checks and balances and limits of a parliamentary democracy as Modi would be.

But these only limit what a Prime Minister can do. They cannot stop a Prime Minister who can bring about vast change by simply letting the Balance of Power do its work. In essence, China has greatly overplayed its hand because of India’s passivity; a passivity more obvious in light of Japan’s first dynamic leader in decades, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. If Modi does respond positively to Abe’s offer of broad ‘strategic’ cooperation (what is there to refuse?), that would be enough to allow the emergence of a much broader coalition that has been waiting to happen ever since 2009. That was the year that China’s leaders over-interpreted the West’s financial crisis as a sign that they had become all-powerful, and loudly started demanding territory; reefs, shoals, islands and 3 million sq km of plain ocean waters from India, Japan and Vietnam as well as Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and the Sultanate of Brunei. In so doing, they greatly exceeded the limits of the Balance of Power, given that India, Japan and Vietnam alone between them have more people, more economic capacity and arguably more technology than China—even without adding Japan’s treaty ally across the Pacific.

The potential in a winning coalition of China’s seven threatened neighbours was obvious, but China’s leaders were emboldened by the dogged insularity and inert passivity of the Indian and Japanese governments, without whose joint lead24 open

ership there could be no coalition, leaving the Vietnamese isolated and Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines much too weak to resist. Yes, there was a low-key increase in intelligence exchanges with Japan, and India did offer its submarine training establishment to Vietnam, but neither changed Beijing’s dismissive attitude. The Chinese too watched the Mumbai attack with fascinated attention, and then waited for India’s reprisal raid. When nothing happened, they saw not wise restraint at work but more passivity, which they felt free to test with border intrusions—in Ladakh as recently as last year.

Modi need not double defence spending nor start a war with Pakistan to respond to Abe’s offer and start building the winning coalition that might yet persuade the Chinese to go back to peaceful ways. What he does have to do is equip himself, as Abe has done, with a team of officials as dynamic as himself who can in turn energise both India’s defence establishment and its diplomacy. The world’s slowest procurement system has Indian pilots flying the same jet fighters that their grandfathers flew, and blandly accepts decade-long delays in delivery of indigenous systems. Given that Modi means to modernise the entire economy with deregulation and new infrastructure, it would be illogical if HAL were allowed to keep delivering antique Jaguars to India’s Air Force and retain its overall laxity.

Equally obvious is that both the Research & Analysis Wing and Intelligence Bureau need new leadership to overcome paralysing bureaucratic factionalism, as well as larger budgets once there is more confidence that the money will be well spent.

India’s greater task, undoubtedly, would be to change its conduct of diplomacy. With Modi, it would face the formidable task of actually building a functioning coalition. For that, good in26 May 2014

tentions will not be enough. New Delhi, Hanoi, Jakarta, Manila and Tokyo would have to interact on a daily basis both to build the machinery of intelligence and military cooperation—everything from joint naval task-forces to some joint procurement (to arm the weaker members)—and to coordinate in minute detail every aspect of each country’s China policy. For example, when China abruptly announces a new demand, such as last year’s Air Defense Identification Zone, or engages in provocations such as its new passports decorated with a map that shows all of Beijing’s claims as Chinese territory, there should be identically-worded protests issued simultaneously by all five capitals instead of scattered complaints, which come across as feeble.

It will not be easy, of course—there would be much more to it than a five-sided editorial conference on the details of a draft agreement—but that is exactly how a functioning coalition is built, by forming joint positions issue by issue, by making coalition policy case by case. Now that ASEAN has lost all strategic relevance—because neither India nor Japan belong to it while China is present through its influence over one or more member-states—everything is set for Modi to join Abe in forging its much-needed replacement. The new coalition partners, moreover, could counteract China in significantly positive ways too; for example by sponsoring a Kolkata-Hanoi road and rail transport axis that would do much for the development of all concerned, including India’s now isolated Northeast. It would also serve the squarely strategic purpose of cutting across the north-south vectors of Chinese influence by drawing in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Laos.

I

t is obvious that India cannot emerge from

Now that ASEAN has lost all strategic relevance, it’s time for Modi and Abe to forge its replacement

its diplomatic inertia unless its diplomats are up to the task. Individually, they are usually very able; but they are simply too few of them, especially back home where grossly overburdened officials add their omissions to the perpetual lack of coordination that enfeebles India’s voice. Moreover, new circumstances require new practices.

Postings to Tokyo and Washington call for double and even triple tours for exceptionally successful ambassadors. This is because continuity yields precious advantages too important to be sacrificed just to give junior diplomats their turn. India’s diplomacy is severely understaffed, but a Modi government would have to do much more than merely adding officials while making sure that today’s high standards are preserved. It would take real foreign-policy leadership—that precious commodity which India has been lacking. As always, real leadership requires courage, which works via a self-reinforcing process: the leader who acts courageously today thereby gains the ability to do more tomorrow. Modi’s act of courage might be to elevate relations with Israel through a prime-ministerial visit; not so much to enhance relations already thriving across the board, but to affirm the independence of India’s foreign policy from any sectarian pressures. Just as no anti-Muslim sentiment should limit coalition-building with mostly-Muslim

26 May 2014

Indonesia, Indian Muslim sentiment should in no way condition India’s relations with Israel.

Courage of a different sort—but of much greater scope—will be needed by Modi to make an alliance with Japan work. That Japan is firmly bound to the United States by a security treaty, while India must preserve its Russian ties (also a favour to the US), is a problem easily solved; simply because it is a one-way alliance: the US is under a treaty obligation to defend Japan but has no reason at all to limit its dealings with India.

The much greater problem is that only a courageously drastic liberalisation of India’s economy—and a dramatic upgradation of its highways and electrical supply—could make India a fit partner to co-lead a coalition with Japan, partly by attracting much more foreign investment, especially from Japanese firms. While they belong to the most organised country on the planet, these firms are willing and able to operate in unorganised countries as well—they are strong in Latin America, for example. But India, now, is neither organised nor unorganised; rather, it is disorganised in a minutely regulated way that often frustrates the Japanese will to invest in the country. Modi’s most important promise is to squarely attack both ends of that problem by assuring key sectors of the economy of quick deregulation and better organisation.

That is also why Modi’s leadership is India’s best opportunity to achieve higher economic growth—without which there can be no escape from mass poverty, nor any possibility of catching up with China.

As for his particular interest in highway-building as a priority, what would be the point of providing a Hanoi-Kolkata motorway right across Bangladesh if the road would abruptly deteriorate as soon as it reached the Indian border?

Japan’s Prime Minister Abe was the guest of honour at this year’s Republic Day parade. Tokyo is now hoping and waiting for a visit by Modi— that would begin with all the usual ceremonies and then continue behind closed doors— as the first of many working sessions that may be expanded to bring in other coalition members. In the meantime, the Japanese Diet is preparing to change the country’s constitution to allow participation in ‘collective defense’, which may be read as the proposed coalition’s charter. As for the US government, it need not participate directly in this vast project; it can support coalition members individually.

That is important because even as they quarrel over Ukraine, both Russia and the United States can only welcome a new Asian coalition that would redress each country’s own imbalance with China. That is why the US has joined others around the world in hoping for a Modi victory and its promise of transformational leadership. n Edward Luttwak is an American military historian and political scientist. He is the author of bestselling books such as The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire and The Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union.

His latest books is The Rise of China vs the Logic of Strategy open www.openthemagazine.com 25

encounter

‘Although I have worked in Delhi, I have never belonged there’ The morning TAVLEEN SINGH got a call from the Chief Minister’s office in Gandhinagar

T

he only time I ever met Narendra

Modi for a proper conversation was in August last year. I have known him for years but never talked to him in any real sense because the only time I tried to do an interview with him was soon after the 2002 violence and that did not go well. No sooner did I enter his office than I was obliged to leave. I was still standing in the doorway when he looked up from his desk, fixed me with an icy stare, and said, “You have known me from my Delhi days, so how could you let yourself believe that I deliberately allowed the violence to happen?” I tried telling him that I had driven from Godhra to Ahmedabad the day before, stopping in villages with ‘Hindu Rashtra’ attached to their names and talked to aggressive young men who told me they would be in jail if they had not been protected by Modi. He gave me another icy stare and went back to examining the papers on his desk.

Since then, over the years I have run into him at social and political occasions but our conversations never went beyond pleasantries. The longest conversation we had was after my book Durbar came out, when at a lunch in Delhi he made it a point to tell me that he had read it and gave me a knowing smile. So when a lady called me from the Chief Minister of Gujarat’s office on a sweltering day last August and told me that the Chief Minister would like to see me, I jumped at the chance for more reasons than one. The most important of these was that I had travelled recently through rural Rajasthan and been astounded by how many people said they would like to see Modi as Prime Minister.

My purpose on that rural tour was to find out if the winds were blowing in favour of Vasundhara Raje who was on a yatra to rally support ahead of the Assembly polls that brought her back to office last December. I planned to spend a day with her on this yatra but thought it would be interesting to wander about on my own as well. She said this was a good idea and suggested that I get off the highway in Behror and meander through villages in the Alwar district that she had not yet 26 open

visited. So this was what I did, and everywhere I went I met people who told me that they had watched Modi’s speeches on television and this had convinced them that he could make India a developed country. It was the first indication for me of a subterranean Modi wave and confirmation of this came the next day when I went with Vasundhara Raje on her yatra. She addressed huge meetings in small towns and villages, and at them I heard the slogan ‘Mukhya Mantri Vasundhara Raje, Pradhan Mantri Narendra Modi’.

Vasundhara Raje cleverly wove this idea into her speeches and talked of how Gujarat had been transformed in 15 years. “Think what could have happened for India if you had given the BJP the 53 years that you have given Congress!” Late that night, after the last rally, I drove with her son, Dushyant Singh, to a little palace hotel in a village called Alsisar where I met a group of Rajasthani ex-rulers who said that in their areas there were early signs of a Modi wave. Reports of this kind must have reached the BJP headquarters as well, and this was almost certainly the reason Modi was named as the party’s candidate for Prime Minister despite opposition from LK Advani and his powerful cabal.

So on the morning that I got the call from the Gujarat Chief Minister’s office, I was more than eager to have a chat with him because I was aware that I could be meeting the future Prime Minister of India. When the girl on the phone, Kavita Dutta, asked how soon I could get to Ahmedabad, I told her that I could go the very next day if he could see me. At Ahmedabad airport, I was received by an official who accompanied me to Gandhinagar and took me to a government guesthouse that had been refurbished with the usual PWD lack of taste. There was white marble on the floors, shiny rexene furniture and a vast bathroom with powder pink tiles. The air-conditioning worked magnificently and there was a large TV screen, but I found myself nostalgic for the old-fashioned inspection bungalows and circuit houses that I remember from my early years as a reporter.

This was not a day for wallowing in nostalgia or for reading the book I had brought along because although I had hours to wait before my meeting, this happened to be the day on which Parliament was passing the Food Security bill. As someone who 26 May 2014

Shailesh Raval/India Today Group/Getty Images

modern sanctum Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi at his spanking new office in Gandhinagar

had vociferously opposed this cripplingly expensive piece of useless legislation, I watched the debate with interest. I had heard that Modi was opposed to the bill but there was no indication of this in the Lok Sabha that day. None of the BJP speakers came up with real reasons why the bill should be “torn up and thrown in the dustbin”; so after Sonia Gandhi made her passionate appeal on behalf of India’s supposedly starving millions, the BJP happily voted for a bill that if implemented could bankrupt India without doing anything to ameliorate the shame of every other Indian child being officially malnourished.

My meeting with Modi was fixed for 5 pm, so by 4.30 an official appeared to take me to his office. We drove through Gandhinagar’s leafy avenues, past institutes of higher learning, to a shiny new secretariat. On large TV screens in the lobby, Modi’s speeches played. I found this narcissism worrying but had no time to dwell on the thought because I had barely taken a sip of my tea in the Chief Minister’s waiting room when I was ushered into Modi’s office. I was surprised that the officials drinking tea with me did not accompany me into the Chief Minister’s presence. It was just the two of us, seated on either side of a small table with a Chinese bamboo of good fortune on it. The 26 May 2014

office had large glass windows and the uncluttered calm of a meditation chamber. In the hour I spent with Modi not a single telephone or official interrupted our conversation.

Since I did not know why I was here, I was not sure what to talk about, so to cover my confusion I began by reminding him that the last time I had come to this secretariat was when he turned me away from the door. He laughed and said that was in the old secretariat. He pointed to it through the glass windows. He did not say why he had asked me to come and see him but told me that he had read a piece I wrote in my Indian Express column days earlier in which I said that hackles had gone up in Lutyens’ Delhi because its denizens could not bear the thought of Modi entering this exalted space. He was an outsider, I had written, of the wrong class and caste. He said, “You are absolutely right in what you wrote… although I have worked in Delhi, I have never belonged there.”

Then conversation turned to the coming General Election and he said he had sensed a real niraasha (despair) in the people.

He said this was particularly true in young people who seemed to have given up completely on their lives ever improving. He said that this despair saddened him, and that he hoped, when he open www.openthemagazine.com 27

Deepak Sharma/AP

guru Pranaam Vasundhara Raje greets Narendra Modi before her oath-taking ceremony as Rajasthan CM in December 2013

became Prime Minister, to do something about it. I asked if he was sure that he would win, and he said, “Yes. The BJP will form the next Government.”

The conversation was a conversation and not an interview, so it drifted around a bit as conversations usually do. He talked of the people who opposed him and said their opposition did not bother him and he talked of things he would like to do to make the economy strong again, and then he talked of more personal things.

He told me what he has now repeated in many interviews. He talked of the poverty he remembered well from his growing years, the teashop at the railway station where he worked after school, the teachers who told his father he should be allowed to study and not work. He talked of how he was drawn to the RSS at an early age because he liked their spirit of nationalism and service.

And, of how he had run away from home when he was still a teenager and wandered about India for two years with hardly any money and no roof that he could call his own. He told me how he had come back to Ahmedabad and worked in the RSS office, doing menial tasks, and how because in his spare time he wrote a book he was encouraged by his mentor, Vakil Sahib, to continue his studies by correspondence from Delhi University.

He told me politics was never his choice of career because he preferred pursuits of a more spiritual kind, but when the RSS inducted him into the BJP he decided to become a politician with as much sincerity as he had done other things in his life.

Since this was a conversation and not an interview, I took no notes until I was at the airport waiting to catch my flight back to Mumbai. And then, as I wrote them down, I thought of the impression that Modi had left on me in the longest conversation I’d had with him. So here it is. I was impressed with his ability to

listen. I was impressed with the accuracy of his analysis that there was despair in the country and that at the root of this was the economic downturn and a loss of faith in political leaders.

And I was impressed with his confidence that if he came to power he would be able to change things.

Later during the campaign I saw him at rallies in Jaipur and Kanpur, and I was in Benares when he came to file his nomination papers, but I have not had another chance to speak to him. What I have had a chance to do during this election campaign is travel around the country and ask ordinary people why they invest so much hope in Modi, and the best answer I was given was by a young man in Benares, who said, “We believe that he is a magician when it comes to development and India needs development desperately.” What I have had a chance to do is discover that when people talk of vikaas and parivartan, what they have bought is the new dream that Modi has defined for them of an India that can one day become prosperous and powerful. It is the opposite of the old dream Rahul Gandhi has sold during this campaign, a dream that limits its boundaries to ‘garibi hatao’.

So now that Modi is on the verge of leading India, do I think he will be the leader that so many Indians hope he will be? It is a difficult question to answer because hope is such a fragile thing that one wrong step can dissipate it. But, having been a political reporter since Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister, and having clear memories of elections past, what I will say is that I believe that India needs today a leader who comes from outside the rarefied confines of Lutyens’ Delhi. Never before has India had so large a population of angry, impatient middle-class voters who are convinced that those who control political power from within those rarefied confines do not hear their voices. n

Narendra Modi was an outsider, I had written, of the wrong class and caste.

“You are absolutely right in what you wrote,” he said

28 open

26 May 2014

Now just tap to OPEN

OPEN Magazine is now available on your iPad

You can now read your favourite OPEN magazine on your iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad. Or if it is an Android device you prefer, just go to openthemagazine.com/digitalmagazine

INNOCEAN-001/12

open essay

By Shiv Visvanathan

AGGRESSION OF THE ASCETIC Deconstructing Modi’s semiotic war: Is it the end of Nehruvian India?

30 open

26 May 2014

I

come from a family of scientists

who are as Nehruvian as you can imagine. For them, Nehru was a metaphor, a way of life, an intellectual style that was both cosmopolitan and aesthetic. Over the past two decades, one saw attempts to revive and re-articulate the Nehruvian Model. These efforts remained elitist and cosmetic. In revivShiv Visvanathan ing Nehru, they did not reinvent him. considers himself a They created a nostalgia, at most a set social science of table manners as a form of political nomad correctness. But the real death-blow to the Nehruvian idea came in Amethi this election as Modi stormed the fiefdom to campaign for Smriti Irani. Nehruvianism died a natural death as his epigone oozed mediocrity, confused family and nation, and forgot the axiomatic principles of its perspective. But that was the self-inflicted part of it. India has also seen a symbolic war that has destroyed the Nehruvian imagination and regime.

And this we need to understand.

In writing history, it is the taken-for-granted we often forget.

Modi’s semiotic war does not begin with Modi, it begins with the RSS. There is a tendency to be paranoid about the Sangh but deny it as anachronistic or tragicomic. The RSS is a powerful machine, and to achieve its aims, it realised the BJP had to achieve power at the Centre. For this, it was even ready to spring-clean the BJP of its old stalwarts. It also needed a man with the mindset of a pracharak who would magnify the RSS view to form the nation’s imagination. This required not the logic of size, which could be inflationary, but the logic of scale. One had to rebuild the imagination layer by layer and word by word.

Think of Narendra Modi.

A dour, ascetic, almost colourless man, a chaiwala dressed in a dull white. He is the Eliza Doolittle of the RSS. Modi, 30 years ago, reminds me of the little drawings and cut-out dolls my sisters used to have. There were bare outlines to which one could add any costume; colour it, build on it, transform it. The rules were simple but the possibilities infinite.

Think of the first image of the man. He exudes aggression. He is a nukkad hero, angry with history and Delhi. He feels history, official history, has been unfair to Gujarat, 26 May 2014

and that Delhi is merely a secret code of exclusion that makes Central power the preserve of the Nehru-Gandhis. Modi is a colourless soul who needs a touch of colour, of style. He has to be rescued from drabness and his dismal science of politics. Colour him literally. His kurta blossoms as peach, light green; his gamcha is now an angavastram, crafted for the symbols of style and leadership. His bare head holds a turban, dyed red, spectacular and ritually deep, with a touch of the primordial. Now, one must manicure the man. The beard is trimmed, the receding hair fights a valiant and victorious battle. A set of waistcoats and Murari Bapu sleeves completes our designer doll. Till now it is a silent movie. One now needs language—both words and body language.

Everyone knows a bully is a temporary cameo. Bullying works only in some contexts, and one then realises a leader is more than a bully. Leadership allows for a bigger canvas. This leader internalises every step. The bluster leads to silence, to a habit of listening. Silence sustained becomes an act of patience, a virtue. He still needs a new vocabulary, something that goes beyond the repetitiveness of riots, of accusation, denial and counter-accusation. The contentious history of the 2002 riots and the redundancy around it has to yield to a different narrative, one that opens out to India’s middle-class like a new promissory note, yet signals a new social contract for minorities.

Development becomes the new ritual of proactive citizenship. It was a secular, technocratic World Bank concept but could also be used as a politically playful dialectic. Thus, one could have the Gujarat or Kerala model of development.

On an optimistic day, even the Bihar model.

Modi used the halo of development as a disciplinary technocratic term, and then hijacked it politically. Development was now a politician’s game, which economists could join as knight-errants or consultants, secondary characters in the development battle. It was desperately seductive, and the Bhagwatis, Panagariyas, Sens, Nick Sterns and our local pack of social scientists joined in, splitting indices in a ritual reminiscent of the battle over the poverty line after the Green Revolution.

Development was now a video game, an object of fixation like PlayStation or X-Box. You corner a word and create a turf, a set of rituals, and then outsource it. It is now your game.

You could create a new civillustration Anirban Ghosh open www.openthemagazine.com 31

ics out of it. Add a variant called Governance, and you elicit a Pavlovian drool. With two words, you have grabbed the high moral ground; you have created a new discourse that all the volumes of EPW cannot drown.

Modi is now Mr Development. It is a conceptual coup that combines a word and a world with brilliance.

Development also performs a few other magical functions.

It erases the past and turns one forward-looking; demand for development is a demand for a better future. It erases memory, whether it is a tribal’s past or a Muslim’s view of a land choked in the agony of genocide. Now the past is seen as hypochondria.

It is your past and therefore parochial. In a bid to escape the past, Modi invites Muslims to the fair land of development. This is the new civics of citizenship, and erasure, its rite of initiation.

It works not so much on minorities but on his constituency— the new middle-class.

Modi and the RSS were shrewd enough to grasp that to create Modi as a leader, he had to be co-produced; that is, mutually recreated along with his constituency—the new middle-class. This class was not confined to the old bureaucratic class of socialism with a mentality as wide as a ration card. It stemmed from consumerism, desire and entrepreneurship, and its origin owed more to Ambani than Nehru. It was a class proud of money-making and ownership of shares as an intrinsic part of citizenship. Aspirational and mobile, it thought beyond caste and sought to create an urbane image of success.

While embedded in tradition, it clutched at certain symbols on the way to modernity, like Linus and his blanket. It adored technology and doted on the nation state. It loved Indian culture as a spectacle and was unapologetic about religion. It was tired of being laughed at by secular intellectuals, and Modi became a champion of this new middle-class. He embraced this majoritarian Hinduism by giving it a consumerist veneer. By linking it to the nation state, he literally created a new political project. Three key terms—‘middle-class’, ‘nation state’ and ‘development’—would provide the nodes of his politics. Ready with costumes and a new vocabulary, our actor now had to initiate the new costume ball.

The target: Delhi. The object: the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. The project: the de-legitimisation of the UPA regime.

neurial successes, its urbanisation experience, its spectacular recovery from the Bhuj earthquake were all highlighted, with Modi orchestrating the show. It was a symbolic battle of numbers, and Modi could piously add that not a single riot had taken place since 2002. Gujarat, the new cornucopia, was contrasted to Delhi. Now Delhi as a construct had to fall symbolically.

For Modi, Delhi was always the Delhi of the Mughals and Nehru-Gandhis, of outsiders who had appropriated history and built a false iconography. Delhi had undermined democracy by undermining federalism. Many states could create alternative societies if Delhi let them; some had already seceded without the Centre knowing it. Supine, Delhi had also failed as a guarantor of security. It had little vision of India as a global power.

Vertebral Modi, ready to take charge of an absentee State called Delhi, would tie the ignored nationalist history of Patel, Vivekananda and Ambedkar to an India of the future. To achieve this, India had to exorcise Delhi of the dynasty.

Exorcisms and openings were to follow.

It was, however, a waiting game, full of middle moves, each creating a grid of expectations. India had to be trained to think across a semiotic grid. Modi realised that the opposition ‘Gujarat versus Delhi’ was not enough. He had to shrink criticism, reduce the role of opponents.

Criticism was read on the insider-outsider grid, as informal sedition stemming from Delhi intellectuals, the outsiders, the old English-speaking elite. Gujaratis knew better. Second, he had to create a new mentality as a confidence-building measure. Gujarat could receive justice from history only if it asserted itself and narrated its achievements. From its asmita to its economics, it became the antithesis of Delhi.

Yet, symbolism, to be complete, needed characters. Delhi was populated by puppets like Manmohan and Rahul. Their denigration was his next act semiotic destruction. It was an act of baiting and bludgeoning that rendered the Congress effete and its leaders impotent. Of course, Modi had moral luck as his opponents stumbled from scam to scam—their handling of which hurt them more than the scandals themselves. With ‘governance’ becoming a hallowed term, the moral emptiness of the Congress was not difficult to demonstrate. What had to be fastened to its sticking place was Manmohan’s impotence.

Let us look at Manmohan symbolically. The UPA I was legend and he was seen by many as the economist-hero, literally a philosopher king, a man who put his money where his mouth was.

India was proud of its academic Prime Minister. Brahminic India waved him like a flag. One had to deflate this, do what a wag called ‘a Churchill’ on him, portraying him, as Britain’s PM had described Attlee, as ‘a modest man with a lot to be modest about’. By UPA II, Manmohan was literally that. His was a goodness that was correct, functional and clerical. Where square pegs had to fit square holes, the Manmohan regime had every-

Narendra Modi became a champion of India’s new middle-class.

He embraced majoritarian Hinduism by giving it a consumerist veneer

O

ne begins tentatively with five-finger exercises. Little forays. Little acts of sniping. One adds to the adrenalin as the audience watches. Gujarat has to be built as the New Paradise. The Congress cannot invoke UPA I, but UPA II has to challenge the promise of Gujarat. A developmental contest begins, and Modi inaugurates its Olympics, each indicator prized like a gold medal. It was a brilliant move. Gujarat’s entrepre-

32 open

26 May 2014

thing in place. Yet, when things turned erratic, his goodness, the quiet way he adjusted, proved inadequate. It could not cope with epic corruption under the regime’s watch. Manmohan’s goodness became autistic, regressing to a silence that suited Modi, who treated him with contempt.

But Manmohan the functionary was easy to neutralise. The real target was the Prince Charming of the regime, the modernist as boy-scout—Rahul Gandhi.

By UPA II, India had a new generation with no memory of either the Freedom Movement or the Emergency. It was an aspirational generation, globalised and upwardly mobile, open to a new symbolic India of the Information Revolution. To a generation that had microchips as genes, Rahul lacked cybercool. Worse, he treated politics as an avocation, projected an absentmindedness that was disconcerting. He was a successor who acted as third in command. He was almost echolalic in speech, talking of his ‘mummy’ and ‘nani’ when a nation expected assertiveness. For the semiotically hungry Modi, he was a perfect target.

The play of opposites was fascinating. Modi was focused aggression, while Rahul was quiet reticence. Modi was aspirational, while Rahul recited his family genealogy like a BA certificate. Modi gloated over performance, while Rahul signalled empty promise.

Modi offered speed, while Rahul signified delay. Modi was inventive, Rahul correct. Modi was responsive, even as Rahul’s learning curve stayed flat.

Modi screamed for attention, Rahul was absence personified. Modi summoned Patel, Vivekananda, Savarkar, Ambedkar and Vajpayee as if he had a full-fledged pantheon of nationalist heroes working for him, while Rahul’s language was simplistic, his invocations limited to family names. One suggested an epic, or at least a soap opera full of myth, the other barely survived as a limerick, too relaxed to convey even a Haiku-like tension.

The drama of contrasts became an exaggeration of opposites.

Modi may have been an acquired taste, but Middle India was making him a habit, like tea. He had the right flavour, the right intensity, a local Wagh Bakri ready to be an orange pekoe—the right brew ready for the politics of the time.

Yet, Modi was not ready as yet. He had to pass the institutional test, obtain clearances from the Nanavati Commission and SIT. Time slowed symbolically for Modi, but his tactics worked.

He realised that dissent was entropic and as critique tended to burn out quickly. It was a waiting game, but wait he could, like a crafty Odysseus, while secular battalions exhausted their script. As memory faded or turned contentiously repetitive, Gujarat signalled a need to move on. The SIT report sanitised him further. With civil society in disarray, Modi was ready for the final battle.

26 May 2014

The battlefield had to change. The ‘Gujarat versus Delhi’ story was too parochial. The war had to be grander. Now it was an idea of India, not just an India of ideas. A new, aggressive idea of India—a match for China, proud to be at Davos—had to be articulated. This needed a mix of symbols both traditional and modern, Swadeshi and technocratic. Problem-solving had to have a touch of machismo. And our boundaries, like our integrity, had to be immaculately clear. By then Brookings and the World Bank had hailed him as the prophet of governance. The Congress, in contrast, sounded dysfunctional.

One needed that last touch of ruthlessness, a clearing out of the stables only the RSS could achieve. This regime was not to be a gathering of yesterday’s heroes. The RSS knew this was its sole chance. This would not be the regime of a Vajpayee who needed a stabilising double in Advani. Unlike Vajpayee’s inclusive magic, this was science, a semiotic war to put a new regime in place for the next few decades. This was not a battle for popularity, but survival. If the future was a scythe, it had to behead people from both sides. The future was Modi, the RSS and India. No other force was relevant. The semiotic machine had to strike clean. Modi was to be campaign manager and party supremo. The rest did not count. It was clear cut, this RSS decision. The election war had an economy to it.

I

f a week is a long time in politics,

10 years can feel like compressed time. In his capture of symbols, Modi has been ruthless. He has captured history, development and a middle-class imagination in 10 years. As a spectacle, he is impressive. Television’s idolatry of him is awesome. He is seen as the exemplar of his own paradigm.

Replaying Patel, squashing Nehru’s epigone, and creating a new chapter of history—but as part of the subconscious. The dramas, though, are of a different order. As Nehruvians shrink, ‘Patel’ arises as a grand archetypal statue, the legend of Indian politics. Remember, small victories will not do. One must pulverise the Congress.

Numbers must speak, uttering the epic victory of Modi.

As the Modi juggernaut reaches Lutyens’ Delhi, one is still left with many questions. How much of India will be Nehruvian, how much Modiesque? Will the RSS, like the CPM, tamper with society? What kind of role will civil society have? Will the State and RSS crush dissent? Will the marginalised have to accept a majoritarian consensus? What is swadesism in a ‘Modified’ society? Will it be a form of technocratic fundamentalism? These are not easy questions to answer, and as one who belongs to the opposition, one must ensure that Modi does not answer them in a facile manner. Democracy as trusteeship cannot be left to Modi alone. This much an opposition should gracefully and forcefully promise to uphold. n open www.openthemagazine.com 33

india today images

crush

The Modi Hotness Quotient

On the sex appeal of the man with the fabled 56-inch chest Lhendup G Bhutia

“

He just looks so wild—like a lion in that beard of his. And in a way, quite hot” Pria Warrick Former Miss India America

“A

s a rule,” she says, “I prefer clean, unshaven men.” Pria Warrick, a former Miss India America who currently runs one of Delhi’s top grooming schools, is speaking over the telephone. “But I will make an exception [for him]. He just looks so wild—like a lion in that beard of his.”

After a pause where she seems to be considering her words, she continues, “And in a way, quite hot.”

An everyday conversation with an affluent woman from Delhi. Nothing exceptional or extraordinary. Except that the one whose appeal is under discussion here is the 63-year-old Narendra Modi.

26 May 2014

“

India’s most eligible bachelor” Mallika Sherawat Actress

Now, Modi is many things to many people. To some, an autocrat who presided over one of independent India’s worst communal pogroms. To some others, he is a symbol of change and vision. A man who created and harnessed a wave large enough to crush a political dynasty of unheralded privilege. But hot? Is Modi, the man with the stern visage—bearing down from flex hoardings with an index finger raised in warning—also leaving a deep burning blush on women’s faces?

Has this General Election given the country a sex symbol?

Like many of his male supporters, many of Modi’s female followers speak

“

He’s like that single uncle you fancy who occasionally comes over for meals” Meghna Patel Actress

admiringly of his work and world-vision, of his thundering oratory skills and the aura that surrounds him. But often, it appears, this enthusiasm borders on the devotion of a young girl’s infatuation. Some speak of his well-turned-out appearance, of his well-trimmed beard and colourful kurtas, and some of his rugged manliness.

Warrick says she first started following Modi last April when he addressed a group of the country’s top businesswomen at an event organised by the FICCI Ladies Organisation (FLO) in Delhi. Modi had not yet been declared the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, although his many public appearances had already beopen www.openthemagazine.com 35

gun to fuel speculation. Warrick, who was attending the event, remembers looking at Modi slouched in a chair, awaiting his turn to speak, and thinking how unimpressive he looked. “I was like ‘This guy over there, he’s going to be our next Prime Minister?’” she recalls. In a hall filled with immaculately-dressed women speaking in clipped upper-class accents, Modi was wearing a regular white half-sleeved kurta. “And then when his turn came, he walked up to the microphone and said ‘Mere maatayen aur beheno’ (My mothers and sisters),” she says, “and I thought, ‘Oh my God! What is he doing?’ But I realised I was wrong. Because for the next half hour or so, all of us were completely mesmerised by him. It was like, ‘Finally, a real man to lead us’.”

According to Warrick, “There is something very innocent and virginal about him, like a single guy from an all-boys’ school, which of course the RSS is. I feel he knows how to get women’s attention.”

W

hile Modi’s election campaign has been about ‘development’, mainly, it has also been about his manliness. He has been all rage and testosterone as the owner of the fabled 56-inch chest, portraying himself as the alpha male whose roar no one dares ignore.

Everyone else has appeared plebeian and humble in comparison. As some see it, he made his 43-year-old challenger Rahul Gandhi look like an overgrown teenager. The effect of Modi’s virility was in glittery evidence when a heavy-breathing Mallika Sherawat called him India’s most eligible bachelor, while another sex siren, Sherlyn Chopra, said she’d like to be his personal assistant.

In Bangalore, Modi’s appeal among women led to the formation of a female volunteer group, NaMo Bharathi, created solely to ensure that all the four constituencies in the city were pocketed by him. Rasita Anand, one of the founders of this group, says, “We went to people’s houses telling them to vote for BJP even if they don’t like the local BJP leader. ‘Just think of NaMo’.” The group was formed after over 100 female professionals in Bangalore shared their view of Modi on Twitter and discovered a common urge

36 open

“

I would like to be his personal assistant” Sherlyn Chopra Actress

to come together in his support. “All of us have just two similarities—we are all women and we all support Modiji,” says Anand, who is pursuing a PhD in cyber security. Members of the group set up a temporary office, helped register new voters, went on door-to-door campaigns, and even organised talks and meets with various BJP leaders.

Poonam Vinod Lal, a software engineer who is also part of the volunteer group, says, “Just look at how respectfully [Modi] speaks to and about women. None of those pretentious, politically-correct, cutesy speeches, where they say something and do something else. Modiji says he cares about us and wants to protect us.” To watch the results of the Lok Sabha polls on television together, NaMo Bharathi’s members have took leave from their respective jobs on 16 May.

I

t is said that Modi is aware of his

popularity among women and ensures that he is always well turned out.

His bright kurtas, made of the finest linen and almost always stitched by tailors from Jade Blue, an outlet in Ahmedabad, are never frayed or ruffled. This, despite the intensity of a vigorous outdoor campaign. It helps, of course, that his hair and neatly-trimmed beard are always in place. He is known to wear only rimless Bvlgari glasses, carry a Mont Blanc pen, and it is rumoured that during Gujarat’s

2007 Assembly election campaign, he underwent a hair transplant to get himself a head full of hair.

Niyati Mehta, who runs a school in Ahmedabad and has met Modi once, says, “Within just a few years of Modi’s coming to power in Gujarat, he became a sex symbol in the state. The women wanted a man like him, and the men started buying clothes like his.” Mehta first spoke with Modi when he was invited to the inauguration of an auditorium of a management college. “I remember myself trembling as he asked what I did and why I didn’t join the BJP’s student wing. Such is his aura,” she remembers.

Last year, when Mehta was getting married, she sent him an invitation card.

She didn’t expect him to show up or respond. But just a few days before the wedding, a hand-written letter arrived from the Chief Minister, apologising that he wouldn’t make it but conveying his wishes. “He is like that,” she says, “caring.”

“Women from the rest of India have only now discovered Modiji’s appeal,” says Meghna Patel, a Baroda-born actress working in Mumbai. “In Gujarat, we have known it for over 13 years.” Earlier this year—somewhat like the ‘Obama Girl’ of 2007 whose sexually suggestive serenade to Barack Obama went viral on the internet—Patel shot a series of nude photographs of herself, her intimate parts covered only by either lotuses in blossom or Modi photographs. These served as online posters, put out with the message ‘Vote For Narendra Modi’. Apart from the photo-shoot, she also created a number of self-financed and poorly-produced videos in her candidate’s support, one of which is an item song-like clip that goes, ‘NaMo NaMo NaMo/ Vote for Modi/ Vote for Modi.’

“People say they find Modiji a tough and strict man. But for me, he is going to be the first Prime Minister who I can relate to. Not one of those privileged Delhiborn politicians. I feel I understand what he’s like and where he’s coming from,” says Patel. “He’s like that single uncle you fancy who occasionally comes over for meals.” When a BJP leader from Gujarat complained to her saying her suggestive posters were not helping Modi’s campaign, she apparently told him, “You help him your way, I will my way.” n 26 May 2014

the look

suket dhir “In the old days, the yards were used as a distinction of class. Six-yard dhotis were meant for the elite.

For a man, the dhoti is one of the most elegant garments. It is purely aesthetic. It is simple and regal. Emperors and kings wore the six-yard dhoti�

The Dhir Look A green Bhagalpuri silk jacket and 500-count six-yard malmal dhoti woven in Murshidabad

Bespoke for the Boss Three designers play with textiles, silhouettes and colour to dress up Narendra Modi for every occasion Chinki Sinha photographs by raul irani

A

t Raisina Hill that morning, the male dress form stood solemn and solitary, dressed in a grey silk shirt and trousers.

A hand-woven tailored jacket in different hues stood out against the grey skies and red sandstone of South Block. In the distance, Parliament House looked like a circus of columns. It had started to drizzle. Gaurav Jai Gupta, a Delhi-based designer who owns the label Akaaro, was trying to explain why he would like to dress Narendra Modi,

the BJP leader. A minimalist, he says history must not overwhelm one. It is the future that matters.

After all, fashion is about choice. It is also about communication. Which is true of politics as well.

“It is a dream to dress up the powerful,” he says.

The designer’s change of heart didn’t happen in an instant. He wasn’t sure that he liked Modi, but says he thought through all the arguments and came to the conclusion that Modi was an interesting personality to design clothes for.

Divyam Mehta “India is rich in terms of textiles and processes, and I want to use that potential. We have these.

We need to place it in a different context. We should be proud of it.

Modi looks like he is proud of what he is, who he is, and what he represents” The Mehta Look: A Banarasi cotton silk kurta with crinkled sleeves teamed with a silk-stitched dhoti and a raw-silk Nehru jacket with Ajrakh work

“Modi has a fashion quotient to him, and that’s why you would like to do something for him. After Indira Gandhi, he is the first politician whose clothes are being discussed. There is something enigmatic about him. He went for the churidar and kurta, but he is stereotyping himself. As a designer, you like to think ‘what if’ and that’s where it starts to become interesting,” says Gupta.

“I think he is fond of his watches and pens, and wears tailored suits,” adds the designer, “Modi is aware of what looks good on him and that works in his favour.

The fact that he wears a certain type of watch is proof of his careful selection.

And fashion is about choice.” He makes a 40 open

reference to Jade Blue, the Ahmedabad makers of the famous Modi Kurta. Bipin Chauhan, the outlet’s tailor who has been stitching Modi’s clothes, had once said Modi did not compromise on three things—eyes, voice and clothes. To Gupta, that’s reassuring; it signals a shift away from the white-on-khaki ‘political uniform’ that RSS-affiliated politicians have worn over the years.

“Look at his body language. He is spontaneous. He is street smart. If you look at Manmohan Singh, he has an organic feel to him. Folded hands, slow hands, and slow talk. AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal also has a certain presence of mind, and if you look at his get-up, he is always about

branding. He has a formula. But Narendra Modi is the only one who can be with the farmer and the corporate [type],” he says.

The grey silk shirt and trousers that he has picked with the handwoven jacket is something he’d advise Modi to wear at an international conference. It speaks of fusion and conveys a certain idea of being global. His two outfits—the other being a pin-tuck kurta paired with mustard-pleated baggy trousers and a Nehru jacket with gold and red cascading down in blocks—are not standardised looks.

“Since it is a hypothetical situation of dressing, you can play around. You also keep it safe and very measured,” he says.

26 May 2014

“It is today’s Indian body of work. A lot of people think that the only person who can revive textiles is Modi. Being from Gujarat, this is an interesting context.

The state is a textile hub. All that symbolism is there when you look at him. He was a pracharak, so he is disciplined. He has a good posture. He comes across as strong and confident. There is that element of crispness, and someone like that can carry off clothes in a nice way. So, he can combine the Western silhouette, the modern and the contemporary. He is someone who seems like he is up-to-date and completely in tune with technology,” Gupta says.

The designer has used a handwoven textile for the jacket, and that is to signal a pride in Indian craftsmanship—fused with what the world is about. “In politics, things are suggestive. I have given him a very understated look, so there’s austerity. These are very earthy colours. The first look is for travelling... it is evolved and classic, intelligent and sombre. The second one is quite playful.”

T

he other designer who specialises in menswear, loves discussing politics, offers arguments against the welfare state, and outlines why he thinks Narendra Modi may be his muse, is Suket Dhir. He mixes history and folklore in his designs to connect. For Modi, he picks a block-print mammal shirt with parrot motifs, and a toned-down cherry-colour Nehru jacket with purple linen pants for a casual look. There’s a pocket square for majesty and distinction. And yet, the look is universal. He feels Modi can be a revivalist force in the crafts sector. He can redeem it. It is a luxury to wear fine cotton, and Modi exudes a certain sense of indigenous ‘luxury’.

“This look is political chic,” says Dhir, explaining his choice, “It’s got a bit of a quirk. It shows the lighter side of the politician. The parrot print goes back to our folktales, as documented in our folktales and folk drawings, and then there is the khadi linen Nehru jacket, and the pants.

It has a colourful twist. Modi does wear colourful stuff. It is slightly more toned down. It is a [slightly] serious take on his colourful dressing.”

Dhir believes that politicians should

26 May 2014

not wear crude cotton just for the sake of signalling austerity. The second look he picks is a 500-count cotton dhoti. No gold borders. Just plain white, and six yards of it. That has a context too.

“In the old days, the yards were used as a distinction of class. Six-yard dhotis were meant for the elite. For a man, the dhoti is one of the most elegant garments.

It is purely aesthetic. The dhoti is woven in Islampur in Murshidabad in West Bengal. It’s original Dhaka malmal (muslin). Each square inch has 500 threads of cotton. This is a very high count, difficult for any machine-made fabric to achieve.

It is done by hand, so imagine the level of craftsmanship. Its retail price can go up to Rs 4,000 per metre length. It is simple, and looks regal. Emperors and kings wore the six-yard dhoti,” he says.

He has paired the dhoti with a green jacket in Bhagalpuri silk with an orange lining. The look, he says, is called ‘Malgudi Days’.

“Bauji [in RK Narayan’s Malgudi Days] used to wear a jacket with his dhoti,” he says. “This could be worn at the time of the speech to the nation on 15 August from the Red Fort. Against the backdrop of the saffrony Red Fort, it kind of brings in India’s national colours—the whites and the green, giving it an Indian picture.

Modi has a strong personality of his own.

I started looking at him two-and-a-half years ago, when much of the stuff in the media was anti-Modi. Only recently did I see a different discourse. That made me think, and it also inspired me. I didn’t want to consider 2002. I wanted my country to become stronger. Modi is not scared of luxury. He is not shy of indulging himself.”

“Modi is only experimenting with the churidar and kurta. A normal dhoti will do the trick,” says Dhir. The dhoti assures its wearer a sense of volume

At the Red Fort, the green stands out.

There is a glint of silken luxury too. The dhoti, in itself, speaks of volume. “He is only experimenting with the churidar and kurta. A normal dhoti would do the trick for him,” he says. “The parrot print, he can wear if he is invited to a literary festival, or is travelling to villages, and people will be proud of the fact that he is wearing what they have created. It is not a traditional Indian print, but it [speaks of] ideas beyond the mundane motifs. It signals a coming of age.”

I

t is more in the texture of this Nehru

jacket in green Ajrakh, than in its look, that its luxury is felt. The 60 processes that it has been through has made this a special fabric, one that your fingers can tell apart. It’s all in the journey of the fabric, says Divyam Mehta, a menswear designer known for his craftsmanship who believes in combining diverse cultures to create what he sees as an authentic Indian style statement.

The male form—a sort of full-body outfit hanger—has been set up outside the BJP’s Delhi headquarters. It has a yellow Banarasi cotton silk kurta with crinkled sleeves, and a silk-stitched dhoti, paired with the green raw silk Nehru jacket with gold buttons fashioned in Rajasthan. The hoarding in the background has Modi’s face—smiling.

The idea of politics, Mehta says, is to combine and fuse. It is about diversity, and that’s the spirit in which he has put together the look. “We are presenting bits of different cultures. The idea is to bring [them] together,” he says. “We get textiles from Gujarat. The Ajrakh print is from Bhuj. The idea is to use it in a different context. The green Nehru jacket is more of a texture thing. We used it on raw silk sourced from Bangalore. Then, we have Banarasi cotton that is used for the dhoti and kurta, and it is cotton silk. And then, the handcrafted pocket square is from Bengal. I would like to see politicians mix crafts and cultures. These pieces can be used in many more contexts.”

While this look that Mehta has assembled is something of a daily outfit, the second one he has put together for Modi is rather more luxurious—even experimental in the way it uses colours and fabrics. open www.openthemagazine.com 41

gaurav jai gupta “There is that element of crispness [to Modi] and someone like that can carry off clothes in a nice way. So, he can combine the Western silhouette, the modern and the contemporary. He is someone who seems like he is up-to-date and in tune with technology” The Gupta Look: Grey silk shirt and trousers with a woven silk jacket

Since the official residence of India’s Prime Minister is located on Delhi’s Race Course Road, this is where we shoot Mehta’s second look.

It is a navy malmal kurta paired with khadi denim pants, and a handmade khaki denim Nehru jacket with faded silver buttons and a kantha (embroidery) pocket square in silk. A hint of luxury and a touch of the unique and aristocratic. But nothing overstated. Only hints. “That’s enough,” he says.

42 open

“The second look is more contemporary,” he says, “It is handwoven khadi denim, and mixed with khadi cotton from West Bengal. The pocket square is kantha work from Kashmir. While the first look is more traditional, and more tailored, the second is casual. India is rich [in terms of textiles and processes] and I want to use that potential. We have these. We need to place it in a different context.”

At the end, it is about Indianness. And pride in the country’s talent and ability.

“We should be proud of it,” says Mehta, “Modi looks like he is proud of what he is, who he is, and what he represents.” A leader who is aware of his look and what it conveys. “As far as I know, Modi is a very fit man. He wants to make decisions and take things forward. It shows in how he dresses: sharp and fitted.” While the BJP leader’s kurtas do add a dash of colour to dull afternoons on grey roads, he adds, the point is to enliven politics. Which is what Modi’s promise is. n 26 May 2014

impressions

On a Magical Carpet in Varanasi Text by Dipankar Gupta Photographs by sreedeep

L

MAN IN THE MASK In such a highly charged election, even mannequins take sides

ike all things fiery , elections have a pleasurable build-up, a climax, and then an emptiness that makes you wonder if it was worth it after all. It was during the anticipatory phase of this multiple stage process that we decided to go to Varanasi.

We were welcomed by a hoarding near the city’s airport, narcissistically announcing that we were now in India’s most important constituency.

I have been to Varanasi several times before; often as many as three times a year. Unlike many, I was never drawn to it, nor did I find the self-indulgent filth of the place fetching. What took me there in those days were the carpet weavers who, until about 2009 controlled 11 per cent of the world’s trade in carpets, but made only a pittance. It was the carpetbaggers, those hardnosed middle men, who made all the cash. I could never stop marvelling, even after I learnt the mechanics of the trade, how the lowly hovels in which weavers toiled were actually connected to global markets.

Varanasi city for me was a stop-over to get to the neighbouring villages; where carpet weavers slogged, raised restless kids and then died, often painfully. Their children resented them and the bitter undercurrents between parent and child could spark off an angry encounter at any time.

Being stuck to a loom in a village is the next worst thing to being stuck to a plough.

That was then, this is now

Several years have passed since those sojourns.

This was a different kind of Varanasi visit.

Elections had charged up the place and many were indeed hopeful that this voting season, unlike those before it, would bring about something different. Now that the results are known, how many, I wonder, are already considering whether it was worth it after all? At any rate, unlike my previous visits, this time I planned to explore the city, walk the ghats, visit a few tem26 May 2014

open www.openthemagazine.com 45

ples and breathe in the strong air of its narrow alleys. I thought this trip might prove that my initial qualms about Varanasi were ill-founded. I knew it could not be love at first sight—that moment was long gone—but perhaps a long, lingering look would change matters.

Gujarat in the skies

The first surprise was waiting on the flight from Delhi to Varanasi. Almost half the seats were taken by Gujaratis, who had no problems at all in announcing themselves as Modi partisans. Actually, they did not have to do much to make this known; their very numbers in a concentrated place 30,000 feet in the air said it all. My neighbour was a legislator who in fact was representing the very area in Surat where I had lived for over a year in the late 1970s.

This plane-load of Gujarati Modi partisans should have prepared me for the fact that Varanasi had been taken over by outsiders peddling their political wares. Modi supporters, AAP activists, even Congress workers were nearly always from some other city or from states far away from Uttar Pradesh. While Varanasi residents stayed put at home—or went about minding their business—it was people like me who roamed the streets generating political gossip, or dressing some up, mannequin style.

The professorial mahant

After sunset the ghats were full of activists from outside Varanasi; now combining business with a spot of pleasure. It is interesting how all of that seemed so relevant until the results were announced . For the victors, the past has already turned stale; the future is now theirs. The vanquished, on the other hand, are

PLAYING TO THE CROWD Amit Shah addresses a section of the business community at Shubham Lawn; (right) street theatre in Assi Ghat

46 open

searching for explanations to take some of the hurt away.

Though the riverside is not a pleasant sight—the propaganda of Varanasi worshippers at Harvard notwithstanding—the street theatres still manage to fill the air with some joy. Now, at last the sun is down and the light is low, except for the bulbs around push-carts and restaurants in the area. In this fading dusk penumbra, the contents of the murky river are not easily visible to the naked eye. This gives the election-based festivities a certain presence that we outsiders have probably captured with our cameras.

Obviously, Ganga Ma needs a clean-up urgently; but surprisingly, this does not top the agenda of most people who live around the river. Men and women are still taking their dips, gargling the water, putting their fingers down their throats so that they can expectorate generously into the river. The one person who is really worried about Ganga Ma’s cleanliness is the mahant of Varanasi’s famous—and highly revered—Sankat Mochan temple.

Now comes the real surprise. The mahant is not your everyday mumbo-jumbo rattler-in-chief; he is, in fact, a professor of engineering at Varanasi’s reputed and well-established IIT. The mahant, Professor Mishra, offers us prasad and tea with a touching mix of formality and affection. He tells us at length what his plans are for the river and how hard his late father fought for this cause—in vain. But he has not given up hope, not yet. He says, with some sense of accomplishment, that he had managed to get a formal acceptance of his clean-up proposal from all the three major political players in this election. This, then, is payback time; will the Varanasi victor now deliver on his promise?

I ask him about Arvind Kejriwal while trying to quickly rem-

weave of tradition Bunkars in Bajardihan village

edy my stereotyped view of a mahant, already beginning to feel foolish inside my skin for once loudly complaining in Delhi that Kejriwal had no business to plonk himself in a temple, and at the Sankat Mochan at that. I had no idea then of who the mahant was—nor that he and Kejriwal are friends because of their common technical background and training.

“Kejriwal was my personal guest, like many other personal guests,” says the mahant. “Why should people complain about this? Just because he is now a politician does not mean I must withdraw my friendship.”

That made a lot of sense to me and I was secretly happy that the mahant would never get to know of my outburst against Kejriwal taking residence at Sankat Mochan. Can I be held entirely responsible? Ask yourself, can there be another mahant of a major Hindu temple who is also a professor of Engineering?

you must be in school?” “Yes,” comes the cheeky reply, “but I’ll need a job one day!” The trickle-down theory is clearly at work here; most adult BJP voters in Varanasi are overwhelmingly for Modi, the job giver.

Bangali Tola has more Bengalis per square foot than Kolkata’s Chowringhee, but it is not Mamata Banerjee who is the reigning deity here. A middle-aged Muslim man who happened to be passing by was immediately stopped by the youths and a BJP scarf was draped around his neck. He did not dare take it off, but he was not happy at all. What is he thinking of now?

Before we go further down this path, let me also add that among the people I saw bathing and splashing in the ghat was a Muslim, wearing a distinctive beard. I saw this as a contradiction until I was told that in Varanasi, the Ganga belongs to all. That may well be true, but if it is, then this would be a stark example of syncretic culture; not all romantic, but basically, good common sense and common convenience.

The famous Pappu Tea Shop—where, we were told, political views were constantly being formed and re-formed—was a first-class disappointment. Nothing very grand was happening there even with an election round the corner. Nobody was discussing politics in any depth, or with any insight. In fact, the customers at the tea stall would only occasionally talk politics, and more often than not, they were just plain wisecracking.

Apart from Modi, the BJP had no other star attraction. Five days before the election, Amit Shah addressed a crowd of business people, only some of whom were from Varanasi. The ven-

“We want jobs.”

Taken aback, I ask, “But you must be in school?” “Yes,” comes the cheeky reply, “but I’ll need a job one day!”

Muslims and the chaiwala

The Bangali Tola is by the Dasaswamedh ghat, and full of RSS sympathisers and Modi supporters; but outsiders were here too, till election day, and in even numbers with the locals. During canvassing time, children between six and 10 years of age were wearing Modi masks and moving in processions that were about 20 strong. From their full-blooded sloganeering to the veins sticking out of their throats, they did their best to imitate their elders; so what if a whole bunch of them had come from outside? I ask a young fellow, pushing 12: “Why Modi?”

Promptly, he replies: “We want jobs.” Taken aback, I ask, “But 26 May 2014

open www.openthemagazine.com 47

ue, however, was half full at best. Perhaps to save themselves the embarrassment, the organisers instructed the tent providers to quietly remove some chairs without drawing attention. Amit Shah gave a thundering speech to an inattentive and sparse audience and repeatedly raised his arms and bellowed, “Har, har, Modi!” I have not seen Modi do that yet, nor I believe, has Arun Jaitley, but here was Amit Shah in full flow.

Brooms in the looms

His address is quite clear now, but in those days when he was on his campaign trail, it was not easy to find Arvind Kejriwal.

Obviously, we were looking out for him—anybody would— but where was he? The Aam Aadmi Party had no central office in Varanasi, and no election manager like what Modi had in Amit Shah. Quite by chance, we got wind that Kejriwal was on a road

What clearly delighted me, however, was the presence of different castes in the crowd. There were no ritual separation between jatis, nor was it that all members of a caste were Kejriwal supporters. Some were Modi groupies, but others were not. If only those who peddle caste calculations at election time had been present, I am sure they would have gulped, swallowed and said “Very sorry!”

However, you can never be too sure; nobody wants to admit guilt or defeat. If the contest between Modi and Kejriwal were to be decided by rural votes alone, then the broom would have swept in a higher vote percentage. The city, very clearly, is where the BJP is stronger and that is there for all to see.

There remains, however, this one big fly in Modi’s ointment: the Muslim community of bunkars, or weavers. They were, almost without exception for Kejriwal, and utterly put off by established parties. The colony—basti—of these weavers is probably the most depressing and degraded part of the city. About 400,000 people are packed in a dense neighbourhood littered with all kinds of garbage, with not a single government school in sight.

There are just two madrassas, one public and one private, and the only education they offer is till Class 8. No wonder the bunkars are angry: so many elections have come and gone and nobody has so far cared to set up a proper school or even a proper medical centre. Besides, this time around, Modi kind-of frightens them. They have heard about Gujarat and they know a lot about the RSS, and they find the combination unsettling. We found four AAP flags, one ragged SP flag, but no other symbol of any other party. Now that all that is well in the past, are the bunkars still entitled to hope?

In the rest of the city, Modi’s presence was stronger, but what will remain an enduring question is how Kejriwal made it this far. When it all began, he had no organisation to speak of, not in Varanasi, not even in the region. There was a time, till not too long ago, when AAP activists were being beaten up at random. But, a Varanasi resident told me, this would not happen again because AAP now has local support. “Touch him now,” he said, “and you might get beaten so bad that your fever will vanish in an instant.”

Now that the election is done and dusted, hot flushes will give way to quieter thoughts. Some will ask: “Have we chosen wisely? Will Varanasi really see good times ahead?” n

I have heard this spiel many times, as have others; but there was rapt attention and tumultuous applause when he finished

TO EACH HIS OWN A bookstore window in Varanasi with fast moving titles

show about 12 kilometres from Varanasi; so off we went in that direction. We came across a makeshift AAP office en-route, confirming that we were on the right track; and as we kept driving, we suddenly saw in the distance a dense column of raised brooms (AAP’s jhaadus) and knew that we had not erred in finding our way.

Approaching this broom-lined, bustling and chaotic passage, one could not help but get a goose-bumpy feeling of being part of a carnival. Kejriwal spoke standing on a jeep and spun out the usual litany against big capitalists and rapacious politicians in dubious alliance. He warned his audience that Modi meant crony capitalism. I have heard this spiel many times, as, I suspect, have many others; but there was rapt attention and then tumultuous applause when he finished. His next stop was a village where a makeshift stage had been set up. He spoke of the same things again and again, and people listened. If I had known the results then as I do now, I wonder how I would have interpreted my impressions of that moment.

48 open

Dipankar Gupta is a distinguished professor at Shiv Nadar University and director of C-PACT. Sreedeep is an independent photographer and fellow at C-PACT 26 May 2014

p o e t ry

mindspace Taking a Village to the World

63

O p e n s pa c e

Anil Kapoor Ranveer Singh Salman Khan Priyanka Chopra

62

n p lu

Hawa Hawaai Million Dollar Arm

58 Cinema reviews

The Last of the Gentle Humorists

books

The Man Who Wrote a Poem on a Non-Meeting

54 64

Nancy Adajania

polyphonic Poet Ranjit Hoskote straddles many creative worlds: literature, art and religion 54

POETRY The Man Who Wrote a Poem on a Non-Meeting Ranjit Hoskote,

a poet who straddles many creative worlds, says anything can be good material for poetry if you can make it work Madhavankutty Pillai

central time

By Ranjit Hoskote Penguin Books India | 131 pages | Rs 399

By fading light, he looked hard at the old maw and while his breath emptied to a final pause, he grinned and painted the parachute trees in the mildewed sepias of autumn.

I

n 2004, three seminal figures of Indian poetry—Dom

Moraes, Nissim Ezekiel and Arun Kolatkar—passed away. It was not unexpected. Ezekiel had been stricken by Alzheimer’s since 1998, Moraes and Kolatkar were both suffering from terminal cancer. Ranjit Hoskote wrote obituaries for all three and it is striking how intimate the portraits are. At the age of 17, accompanied by his father, Hoskote had gone to Ezekiel to show his poems. Kolatkar was someone who designed the cover of his third book of poems, though that is not mentioned in the obit. ‘With his leonine silver mane and brooding look, his apparently formidable grimness easily broken by a sudden grin, Mr Kolatkar was one of those distinctive figures who bring a special flavour to the life of a metropolis,’ he wrote. It was, however, Moraes that he was most influenced by.

Hoskote’s obituary to Moraes starts with the telephone numbers of poets his old phonebook has seen, many of which remained unchanged but not Moraes’s. ‘Against Dom’s name, I have six different numbers, a sequence that maps his movements from the mid-1980s to his death on 2 June. First, now lightest, is an old six-digit Colaba number, overwritten with its seven-digit successor: these mark the large-windowed, high-ceilinged home that Dom shared with his wife Leela Naidu, shaping his exquisite, melan54 open

choly verses in its spacious light. Next comes the number of a Worli hotel where he stayed briefly after his separation from Leela, followed by the number of a film-maker friend whose home on the Bandra seafront was Dom’s next refuge.

Finally, an arrow away, are the numbers of the two apartments at the Bandra Reclamation that served him, successively, as home in his final years,’ Hoskote wrote then.

In his latest collection of poems, Central Time, there is one dedicated to Dom Moraes. It is called ‘Conspiracies’ and has an array of characters—a centaur, a hunchback, a dwarf, a clown and a cat—plotting and doing violent things to each other. It abruptly ends with these lines, ‘The delirium fades, the toys fall back/in their tin box. A boy comes in/to pick up the pieces.’ And allegory merges into a child’s imagination.

26 May 2014

the art of poetry Ranjit Hoskote does not try too hard to be understood

ritesh uttamchandani

I ask Hoskote why this particular poem is for Moraes. He says it is founded on the idea of the world coming through to a child who is trying to make sense of things, and where things are inexplicable, he creates a fictive world. “So when circumstance impinges on that fictive world, one of the ways it could come across is miracle, but it is also conspiracy. That is some of what unfolds in that poem. I was revisiting the first volume of [Moraes’s] autobiography and I have always been moved by the fact that he survived his rather difficult childhood. This idea of a rich interiority, how you create your own world as a child and the whole of your life being almost a way [of] trying to hang on to that rich interiority,” he says.

Nothing, as you can see, is simple with Hoskote.

26 may 2014

I should have burnt my shadow on a wall to remind them I had been there

M

ost of Central Time ’s poems were written between

2006 and 2014. The book has 100 poems divided into five sections of 20 each. This ordering, based on the shataka form of ancient Sanskrit poets like Bhartrihari, is precise and complex, much like his poetry itself. His relationship with Nissim Ezekiel is indicative of Hoskote’s approach to poetics.

In December 1986, when he was 17, Hoskote had finished his twelfth standard and taken a gap year to figure out what he wanted to do. He had already been working seriously on some poems. His father, who had been a junior of Ezekiel in open www.openthemagazine.com 55

Wilson College, took him to Theosophy Hall, the Indian office of PEN, the association of writers and editors, where the poet was secretary.

“Nissim was both tough and kind. Over the next few weeks, he read the manuscript and then pointed out that 80 per cent of it was not poetry. But there were certain things which could be worked upon. This was the generosity of the man; he got me to read on a radio programme he was doing, and he published one of these poems at PEN but always with the proviso that there were lots more work to be done.

He always sent you a postcard. After that meeting, I got a postcard saying ‘Come and see me at...’.”

But despite his respect for Ezekiel, Hoskote would go on to disagree on poetry with him. “He was always for the commonsensical spoken voice, everyday-life kind of sources of poetry. Which at that point, particularly, I was not very keen on. I think I was reading the surrealists, looking at Paul Celan’s work. But looking at it today, I would take a far more nuanced view. I am re-reading Nissim’s collected poems quite a bit and there are amazing things from the 60s and 70s, lovely poems which just speak to the fallible human subject. So one of my issues with him at that point was I wanted an infallible poetic subject.”

The poet Arundhathi Subramaniam, who has featured Hoskote’s works in anthologies she edited, first met him 25 years ago at a literary quiz that she’d organised at Malhar, a festival of St Xavier’s College. They then ran into each other at Poetry Circle, a group in Mumbai that met once a month.

‘I recall him reading ‘The Acrobat’, a poem that went into his first book, Zones of Assault. I was struck rightaway by the assurance of his voice—and that, by the way, has never left him; I have been through years of self-doubt and laryngitis in my journey as a poet, but RH seemed to have arrived with a voice that was fully-formed, confident and fullblown. That has remained,’ she says on email.

What draws her to Hoskote’s work ‘is the image’. ‘I share his excitement about that, and I think both of us would see it as the marrow of a poem, its raison d’etre. His metaphors have always been superbly crafted. If they were more hard-edged and adamantine in the early work, they seem to be growing more supple and permeable now. As I said in my review of his last book, there is actually a fridge in one of his poems! That’s a first in an RH poem, which otherwise abounds in mythic figures and contexts. You could find urns and goblets and quills in his poems, but a fridge!!

Something’s thawing, clearly (and I like to think it’s more than just the fridge).’

Hoskote, she says, will not put a poem out into the public domain unless ‘it’s been wrestled with, crafted, honed, pounded and beaten into shape’. She also respects him be-

cause he doesn’t try too hard to be understood. ‘In a world where everyone’s falling over themselves to be accessible in jingoistic ways, RH continues to write a robustly riddling verse. I respect and value that,’ she says.

I ask Hoskote how he sees his own poetry having evolved from his first collection Zones of Assault to Central Time. “I began with a rather aggressive idea of poetry, which is that it should provoke and, possibly, antagonise the reader. And be some kind of artefact. That view has completely changed over the years,” he says. Now he is much more interested in the ‘speaking voice’. There is also the social dimension of poetry, which wasn’t there in the beginning but he finds crucial because “in some sense you are also in your own voice taking on the grain of other kinds of voices”.

Mythology is a theme running across his poems but not in the manner that you expect. For example, ‘The Hotel Receptionist’s Confession’ in Central Time. It is a poem which comes out of a combination of the Greek myth of Procrustes, the host who fits his guests into the bed by chopping or stretching their bodies, and a fascination with Alfred Hitchcock’s movies. “For me, myths persist and inform everything we do. At least, one of the smaller experiments in Central Time was to have the myths come at you from unexpected angles. I am also interested in seeing how these cultural contents which have been important to me can come together in the poetry that I write. How do I reconcile the fact that I have a long-time interest in Hitchcock cinema with Greek mythology with what is happening around us,” he says.

“I began with a rather aggressive idea of poetry, which is that it should provoke and antagonise the reader. And be some kind of artefact. That view has completely changed over the years” he says

56 open

The beach daubed in dots, the sky woven in stipples, The sun blotted out by cloud-wool, and the mountain, They painted this mountain so many times

H

oskote’s poetry is visually rich. Take the poem ‘Still Life’ which has just four lines: ‘The sliced apple/has elephants’ eyes for pips/they stare up at the knife/that has brought them to life.’ The suffusion of images is because Hoskote has one leg in the literary world and the other in the art world.

And both of them have always travelled together. He became an art critic for The Times of India while he was still in college.

He was 18 years old when he went for a Vivan Sundaram exhibition titled ‘Long Night’. It was a set of charcoal and mixed media works in which the primary images had to do with concentration camps, enclosures, winter landscapes in a stylised form. Hoskote responded by writing a piece.

The Times published it and the arts editor asked him to keep writing for it. Later, Hoskote joined the Times. He is now one of the foremost art curators in India. And he doesn’t really switch between these domains as merge them in his work.

26 May 2014

Some of the poems in Central Time appeared earlier in Pale Ancestors, a collaboration between Hoskote and the artist Atul Dodiya. Dodiya’s initial acquaintance with Hoskote was in 1989 at his first solo exhibition. “He did a review for my show,” says Dodiya, “Before that I had read some of his reviews in the newspaper. I knew he was someone very young who was writing about art with a wonderful sort of vision. I had also heard that he was not just an art writer but also a poet. That was something I was fascinated to begin with. A creative person looking at creativity in another medium—that has a very special advantage, I feel.”

A friendship developed between them. They were both interested in a broad range of cultural aspects, from Indian mythology to the European Renaissance to contemporary art.

“Because I have lots of diverse things incorporated in one single work of art, it was very easy for me to share my concepts with him. He would grasp and understand it very fast and get what I was trying to do. After that, a majority of my catalogues are written by him,” he says.

Pale Ancestors was a series of 48 water colours by Dodiya. “I told Ranjit that there was going to be an exhibition and a full-fledged proper catalogue: ‘Will you write the catalogue essay for it?’ He said, ‘Certainly’.” Later at one point, Hoskote told him that he was thinking of responding to the works with individual poems. They would be independent, but at the same time, the triggers would be specific images from his work. He came up with 48 poems.

Dodiya says there are very few good writers as far as the visual arts is concerned and Hoskote is one of the most important in this group. “We need people who can articulate what is happening with the visual arts in today’s time, and I think Ranjit has an immense contribution.”

Hoskote calls it a hybrid practice. “It has been that way from the very beginning. There was not that sense that I had to choose from one or the other. It began as a child. I used to paint and my parents thought that was what I would be doing. I wanted to go into architecture, which I didn’t manage because my grades in maths were terrible. But by then I decided that I would take social sciences. I had this beginning in the visual arts and music and literature. It was always one thing following another. Also, I was blessed to have this ethos of practitioners like Nissim and Adil (Jussawalla) who were also active in multiple fields. To me, that was also an important part of growing up.”

Hoskote was also the religion editor of The Times of India in the 1990s and the name of its spiritual column ‘Speaking Tree’ was given by him as a homage to Richard Lannoy’s book The Speaking Tree.

He is also a translator. I Lalla, his translation of the poems of the 14th century female Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded, took him 20 years. He ventured into the project because he was

bound up with questions of Kashmir and Kashmiri identity.

“Because I have this disaporic past. We have been settled on the west coast for centuries, but our origins are Kashmiri.”

I ask him how he knows when a poem or a translation, which can span years, is finally complete. He says, “There comes a point when you feel you can’t really push it further.

That it has arrived at some intuitive balance of forces within the text.”

Alone on the wet marble, You tap the empty glass and listen, for an echo.

B

ut what is perhaps more interesting is the process of how poems begin. In Central Time, there is a poem for his friend and journalist Naresh Fernandes. It is called ‘Lunch at Britannia’. I had read a snippet in the daily tabloid Mumbai Mirror in which Fernandes said that it was based on a meeting that did not happen between them many years ago. They frequently ganged up at Britannia restaurant in south Mumbai. That day, though, Fernandes had left after waiting for some time and Hoskote missed him by minutes. It was the days before cellphones, and they had not been able to connect.

Hoskote says the poem was written much later and must have been in gestation. “The way I work is that it begins as a notation or a fragment that I revisit and sometimes the fragments come together.

Or they serve as a prompt and a completely different poem emerges.”.

I ask him whether everything is then material for a poem. “Potentially, if you can make it work,” he says, and goes on to say why that non-meeting became a poem. “Certain things happened. One is it was before mobiles, so this sense of having missed out on a meeting, for me it is always a nightmare. Because I was always afraid of waking up late and missing school. Then, there was this table which I really thought might have been his. And this is the devious mind at work, it was really like a still life. Still life is a sign of how time passes, it is a signifier of mortality. And all this came to me in the space of a few minutes. There was also something amazingly vivid about the Britannia raspberry (drink)—still sparkling in its bottle, something about time missing the moment in some ways, being reminded by inanimate objects. It was a whole range of things very difficult to put in words.”

And when it was put, this is how some of it came: ‘a tableau painted by the crater of emergency/that makes a long-playing Pompeii of our works and days./Is this a joke on me, the man who turned up late?/Or purest blasphemy, your immortal soul in peril,/accused by an empty chair?’ n

Hoskote straddles many worlds. He became an art critic for The Times of India while still in college. He was the paper’s religion editor in the 1990s. He has also translated Lal Ded’s poems from Kashmir

26 may 2014

open www.openthemagazine.com 57

Books The Last of the Gentle Humorists Urdu great

Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi’s marvellous light touch and affection for all sorts of folk weird and wonderful is writ luminous all over his last published work Matt Reeck

Mirages of the Mind

By Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi Translated by Matt Reeck and Aftab Ahmad Random House India | 560 pages | Rs 499

C

olonial and post-colonial writing in Urdu was en-

riched by a tradition of humour and satire, and Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi was its leading light. A new translation of his last published work, Mirages of the Mind takes us back to a time in history that is slowly fading away.

Yousufi is widely regarded as the leading contemporary writer of the Urdu literary genre of humour and satire. For those uninitiated in the ways of Urdu literature, this might seem like a curious double category—humour and satire— and, though in ways it is, a brief history lesson will show how various literary strains combined to form its distinctness.

The genre’s history stretches back to the beginning of the 18th century. There, we find the first writer of Urdu humour and satire, Mir Muhammad Jafar Zatalli (his pen name means ‘the babbler of nonsense’), who, the tale goes, was executed in 1713 by Mughal Emperor Farrukh Siyar for writing an insulting, satirical poem to inaugurate the new emperor’s reign. So much for early attempts at Urdu satire.

Humorous and satiric moments continued unabated, whether in satirical poems, in ghazals, dastan stories, in letters (such as those of Ghalib), or in novels. But, for the genre to appear as a form in its own right, it had to wait until the second half of the 19th century. Then, in 1877, a satirical newspaper began to be published from Lucknow, The Avadh Punch, that was based upon the model of the famous British newspaper of similar name. The Avadh Punch generated imitators, and soon the genre was solidly a part of the Urdu reading public’s consciousness. It was only in the 20th century, then, that the genre

became a prominent vessel of literary ambition.

Patras Bukhari (1898-1958), Rasheed Ahmad Siddiqui (1894-1977) and Yousufi (born 1922) are routinely cited as its leading modern writers. One recent critic has declared this the ‘Age of Yousufi’, and, without taking away from these two predecessors, I would suggest that Yousufi has found ways to embellish and extend his genre’s art in unexpected and profound directions.

So, are the genre’s two elements necessarily intertwined, as they are in the Urdu phrase ‘tanz o mazah’? Yousufi has an interesting way of thinking about his chosen literary enterprise. He thinks of the two parts—humour and satire— as being somewhat separable. While the latter seeks to lampoon regressive cultural practices and personages, the first is gentler. That is, satire laughs at people, and humour laughs with people. Yousufi’s books back up his thinking. His work draws us in with its gentleness, and it makes us laugh along with the ridiculous situations and awkward moments that his characters experience.

Yousufi is known for many characteristic flourishes, including his light touch, his mordantly ironic puns on classic Urdu, Persian and English poetry, and his love for eccentric characters. But, as a signature, perhaps his digressive style is the most obvious.

In Mirages of the Mind, his masterpiece and his last published work, Yousufi serves as the scribe for the stories of his fictional friend and protagonist, Basharat. Basharat’s own narrative style is not long story short, rather, short story long, and this suits Yousufi’s own brand of prose well.

At another point in the book, Yousufi describes this style through the words of Mirza Abdul Wadud Baig, ‘When you slip on a banana peel, you should never ever try to stop yourself or put on the brakes because that will only cause greater injury. Just slip without a care in the world. Enjoy it.’ Slipping on a banana peel and enjoying it might be good branding for Yousufi’s style.

This digressive style leads to some

Yousufi’s style find an echo in these words: ‘When you slip on a banana peel, you should never ever try to stop yourself... for that will only cause greater injury. Just slip without a care’

58 open

26 May 2014

illustration Anirban Ghosh

confusion in the classification of the book—is it a novel, or a series of tales? Is it fiction, or non-fiction? There doesn’t seem to be a necessary contradiction, at least in the first case. (All fictions are loosely non-fictions, and vice-versa, so the second question doesn’t present any real problems either.) We call it a novel, and the way in which Yousufi focuses on Basharat as his main character means that it is indeed a novel, of whichever sort, that the book bears.

T

he novel begins with Basharat’s story of his father-inlaw, the formidable Qibla. Qibla is a larger-than-life character—irascible, belligerent, quirky, fashion-conscious, and, in private, disarmingly sweet. The narrative traces Qibla’s life back and forth across the border—from his lumberyard in Kanpur to his new life after Partition in Karachi.

Qibla’s physical aspect makes his seem half like a god, half like a demon. Basharat describes him in the following way, ‘His big eyes bulged from their sockets. They were always bloodshot—really bloodshot. As red as pigeon’s blood. I thought the red veins around his pupils would burst in a fountain of blood to spray across my face.’ This is, no doubt, a theatrical exaggeration, right? The description goes from more or less realistic to a comical—and rather disgusting—fantasy of what his bloodshot eyes might eventually become, a fountain of spurting blood.

But Qibla has his endearing aspects as well. He loves his

26 may 2014

lumber, perhaps too much. He protects it from those customers who don’t know about wood. To some, he refuses to sell. Generally, though, he overcharges. Again, in Basharat’s words, ‘He lived by his principles. Which is to say ‘Quality Store, Quality Product, Wrong Price.’ I’ve heard that Harrods, the world’s most famous store, advertises itself as having everything from sewing needles to elephants. But I’ve also heard that the price for either is the same! If Harrods sold lumber, I swear they would follow Qibla’s price points.’

When Qibla immigrates to Pakistan, he finds himself at a loose end. He had a ‘mansion’ in Kanpur, but he’s stuck begging for a home in Karachi. After trying to go through the proper channels for a while, he wisens up and takes what is within reach—an apartment on Burns Road. Qibla breaks this apartment’s lock and yanks off the nameplate, which reads, ‘Custodian Of Abandoned Properties’. He redoes the nameplate to read ‘Muzaffar Kanpuri’. To his friends, he explains his fake poetic penname by stating that he’s never heard of a civil court case against a poet. (Because, presumably, everyone knows they are indigent.)

Still, the apartment doesn’t compare to his old house, which in his imagination has grown day by day. Indeed, nostalgia informs most of the novel, and here is where Qibla displays his greatest nostalgia. His new home lacks size, and its quality is suspect as well. Qibla has some photos of his old house, and he gets one framed: ‘Qibla got a photo of the mansion enlarged and framed, and when he was hammering a nail into his open www.openthemagazine.com 59

apartment’s paper-thin wall, the neighbor on the other side came over and asked whether he could place the nail a foot higher so that he could use the nail’s other end to hang up his shervani.’

Talk about communitarian living in South Asia—this is real community!

Qibla’s narrative is punctuated by three major incidents involving other characters. In Kanpur, Qibla’s store is next to another lumber store owned by an ex-wrestler from Kannauj, whom everyone refers to as Mr Wrestler. The two men have an intensely antagonistic relationship that ends with violence. When Mr Wrestler infringes on the space outside of Qibla’s shop where customers pass by, Qibla gives chase with a charpoy leg. They pass over a set of railroad tracks, and Qibla hits Mr Wrestler, who falls and breaks his leg. This leg has to be amputated, and soon Qibla finds himself in jail. But, contrary to expectation, Qibla is not humbled by the experience.

Instead, he exits jail two years later even more menacing than before: ‘He installed a pole outside his cabin and hung on it a wooden leg, which he had had made by a carpenter.

Each morning and evening he would raise and lower this leg, just like the Union Jack was raised and lowered in those days in military camps. He sent threatening letters to those who hadn’t paid their bills for two years.’

Not only that, but he begins to take special pride in signing ‘excon’ after his name.

The funniest story of his relationship with Basharat is probably that of the build-up to Basharat becoming his son-in-law.

Basharat’s fear of Qibla, and of asking him for his daughter’s hand in marriage, is so great that Basharat can’t do it in person. He writes a letter, which he sends by registered post, though they live next door to each other. The letter runs to 23 pages of encomium and false praise (about Qibla) but never gets around to mentioning the name of the object of Basharat’s affections. Qibla’s response is classic: ‘He read the letter twice and then handed it to his secretary with these words, “Read this and tell me who this prince wants to marry. He’s described me quite well, though.” ’ Qibla’s other defining relationship is that with his wife.

While his interactions with his wife aren’t generally funny, they do lend poignancy to the portrait that Yousufi sketches, and they make us view Qibla not as a caricature but

a character—living, robust, and, like real people, contradictory in many ways. Qibla’s wife suffers a debilitating hand disability. She develops this several years after their marriage, and as a result of this, gradually loses contact with the outside world. That is, people shun her. Qibla, quite in contrast, takes to caring for her with saintly and meticulous attention: ‘So Qibla dedicated his life to helping her, and he did so in such a selfless and loving way that it beggared description. Her hair was always braided. Her scarf was always pleated, and on Friday, it was always cornflower blue. With the passage of time, her hair grew grey. But Qibla’s love for her didn’t weaken in the least. You couldn’t imagine that this embodiment of sacrifice and love was the same person who, when out of the house, raged and fumed like a sword cutting through air.’

Yousufi’s writing is never simply about laughing. This is another way in which it transcends its genre. With Qibla, and with so many other characters in the novel, we notice something familiar from his earlier books, but newly clear—we see how Yousufi loves the eccentric, and that he includes these characters not just for a good laugh. Rather, these characters reveal social values.

Every culture has its norms, but they become evident only when they run into conflict with difference. Cultural difference that is entirely ‘the other’ does, unfortunately, on frequent occasions incite hatred, fear and derision.

But difference within a culture has a greater chance of being held at an intimate distance, a position from which the difference of eccentric people can inspire reflection and, in some cases, positive cultural change.

Certainly, there is much laughter to be found in his books.

But his distinction between humour and satire continues to direct our attention to something significant: while his characters might be exaggerated in this way or that— frequently they are oddballs, misfits, wayward souls and eccentrics— their humanity makes them three-dimensional.

His love for these characters and for the types of people they stand for in ‘real life’ is clear.

That makes his writing something beyond simply humour writing; it makes it great literature. n

Yousufi’s love for oddballs and weirdos and for the types of people they stand for in ‘real life’ is clear. That makes his writing something beyond humour writing; it makes it great literature

60 open

26 May 2014

CINEMA

A CHILD OF MANY PARTS Before his debut in Stanley ka Dabba , Partho Gupte was part of Taare Zameen Par as a three-and-a-halfyear-old cue master. Today, he is a 13-year-old actor, musician, filmmaker, skater and a capoeira (a Brazilian martial art) neophyte

Hawaa Hawaai After the winsome realism of Stanley ka Dabba, Amole Gupte resorts to pure sentimentality ajit duara

o n scr een

current

Million Dollar Arm Director Craig Gillespie cast Jon Hamm, Aasif Mandvi,

Alan Arkin

Score ★★★★★

Saleem GUPTE, saqib Cast Partho e gupte Director amol

I

nexplicably, Amole Gupte, who was shaping up as a very interesting director—with a style of subtle realism and a way of treating children as individuals, as convincingly as the Italian neo-realists once did—has succumbed to the lure of Hindi melodrama.

Making Hawaa Hawaii after Stanley Ka Dabba is not the occasional stumble that filmmakers can be excused for; it is a compromise in values, in the very principles of what makes good cinema.

Gupte has consciously switched his film treatment, as if to say that realism with kids does not pay, so let’s try sentimentality. The film is about a bunch of slum kids who enviously watch rich kids learn how to skate.

They have skates which cost as much as Rs 30,000 and are being trained by a professional skater (Saqib Saleem).

One of the street kids serves tea outside the skating rink, and his hands are full of blisters from the hot glasses. His name is Arjun (Partho 62 open

Gupte) and he is the son of a farmer who was cursed by drought and barren fields in rural Maharashtra. This eventually led the family to migrate to the shanty towns of Mumbai.

The minute this scenario is presented, you know what’s going to happen. Arjun is going to overcome all the odds against him —every economic and social challenge— and become the skating champ. Which would still be fine, and might even have made a predictable but watchable movie, had the film not insisted on giving us kids who speak in cloyingly sweet and obviously rehearsed lines .

Partho Gupte is a naturally gifted actor, but even he struggles to rise above the mediocre cast of actors used as instruments in a social message, instead of being etched as living beings you can connect with.

After the poignant and masterful Stanley Ka Dabba, this movie is a huge disappointment. n

Nobody understands baseball in India. But that doesn’t really matter in this movie, since all you see is a couple of chuckers who would have been no-balled out of the park, but land a trip to America instead because there they are called ‘pitchers’. The movie is based on Dinesh Patel and Rinku Singh, who played baseball for the ‘Pittsburg Pirates’ after they won a talent contest in India, set up by an American sports agency.

Underdog sports movies can be great fun, but this one is focused almost entirely on the social and cultural dimensions of the encounter. Some of the portions, particularly those shot in India, are well done and relatively free of patronising attitudes to differences in society. When the boys fly to Los Angeles to train, the culture shocks they experience are described with empathy and humour.

Some of the acting is good. Alan Arkin as Ray, the laconic baseball scout, is brilliant.

He comes to India and sleeps through all the trials, only waking up when he hears a really good thud on the gloves of the catcher. Without opening his eyes, he knows the exact speed of the pitch. The rest of India, he doesn’t want to see.

This is a watchable movie about sports and culture, but about baseball it is not.

Fortunately. n AD

26 May 2014

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

Busy Actors and Harried Filmmakers

Reports that the desi version of 24—produced by and starring Anil Kapoor—didn’t quite achieve viewership targets haven’t dampened the actor’s spirit. AK is insistent that a second season will soon appear. He admits that the show couldn’t have attracted the same volume of viewers that embrace traditional melodramatic soaps. “This is a new format, a new genre for Indian television, and it certainly has a very different look and feel,” Anil explains. “The good sign is that viewership grew with each episode.”

Before he begins work on 24 Part Deux, however, Anil will dive into Zoya Akhtar’s Dil Dhadakne Do, in which he plays papa to Priyanka Chopra and Ranveer Singh. His shooting dates for that film have reportedly overlapped with the dates he’d allotted for Anees Bazmee’s Welcome sequel (titled— what else?—Welcome Back), and now both filmmakers are trying to find a way to optimise their dates with the actor.

Later in the year, he’ll also shoot No Entry Mein Entry (again to be directed by Bazmee), the cheerfully silly-sounding sequel to the 2005 blockbuster that’ll reunite him with Salman Khan. The film, to be produced by Anil’s brother Boney Kapoor, has been delayed for months—presumably because of Salman’s chock-a-block schedule, and also because of the falling out between Salman and Bazmee during Ready. Harrowed producer Boney, however, stepped in to mediate recently.

Groom and Tell

Bitter exes can be a dangerous thing, and Priyanka Chopra appears to have learnt that the hard way. The actress is currently seething over a recently-announced film project, involving her former boyfriend Aseem Merchant and ex-secretary Prakash Jaju.

Model-entrepreneur Merchant is producing a film inspired by Priyanka’s life, which will include her messy split with Jaju. The actress, when urged for a reaction, said she was disappointed that someone she knew and trusted would want to exploit her life.

Jaju, who claims responsibility for grooming Priyanka into an A-list movie star soon after she won the Miss World crown in 2000, famously clashed with the actress and her late father when they terminated his 26 may 2014

services. He went on a public tirade against the actress, claiming underpayment, and reportedly even leaked telephone records, which revealed many late-night conversations between Priyanka and her much-married co-star Akshay Kumar. The Chopras subsequently sued Jaju for intimidation and stalking, which led to his arrest.

Now it seems Jaju has a means to embarrass the actress again. Jaju claims the film is about his own life, although he has revealed that his history with Priyanka will be a big part of the film. In the same breath he insists he has no hard feelings against her. Confused much?

An Awaited Crime Thriller

The daughter of an eminent writer-filmmaker is reportedly preparing to shoot her new film which will be an investigative account of one of India’s most shocking unsolved crimes. The lady in question, who has directed two films earlier—both box-office failures—has found a producer in a respected ‘art-house’ filmmaker who was able to secure funding and distribution for the project because of his own involvement. He has agreed to be on set throughout the shoot, which was reportedly the financier’s only condition in exchange for bankrolling the film.

The highly sensitive and more than likely very controversial film will examine a high-profile double murder from the police perspective and will offer a logical theory about the identity of the perpetrators. The actual case itself continues to play out in court.

The filmmakers have roped in a much-admired male actor to take the role of the investigating officer. The actor, currently filming a Hollywood blockbuster sequel in Hawaii, is believed to have taken a substantial pay cut for the film as a sign of gratitude to the producer, who gave him one of his best roles some years ago. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN

open space

Taking a Village to the World

by d e v i k a b a ks h i

raul irani

Sher Singh is a 49-year-old employee of the Department of Posts.

And if you were one of the 650 or so inhabitants of Chitkul, a small Himachali village just shy of the border with China, you’d be very grateful for his existence.

Singh is a dak runner, one of the 150-odd men still carrying post long distances on foot in parts of India hard to access any other way. For over 20 years after he walked into a post office and was offered a job, Singh worked as a Grameen Dak Sevak in Bhabhanagar, Kinnaur district. In July last year, he was recruited by the postal department as an official dak runner. Almost every day since then, he has briskly covered the 12 uninhabited kilometres between Raksham and Chitkul on foot, in fair weather and foul, to bring the little village its mail—and then taken outgoing mail back to Raksham, from where it is taken, by another dak runner, to Sangla, and then out to the world. Though he isn’t privy to its contents, he appreciates the value of the sealed bag of mail

64 open

he carries, sometimes weighing 15 kilograms, for six hours a day.

There are pension cheques in there, he knows, letters of admission; things for which people are waiting, avidly.

In Delhi on the occasion of the launch of veteran journalist BG Verghese’s book Post Haste—dedicated to ‘the Dak-Runners of India, who still connect us contemporaneously and with our past’—Singh seems somewhat bemused, if not weary, of the same barrage of questions asked of him by journalist after journalist fascinated by his profession. He is eager to venture out, despite the alien heat, and see the Red Fort for the first time with his 22-year-old son, who is in the second year of his BSc. Not that he doesn’t recognise the import of his profession. “Dak aur rail Hindustan ki reed ki haddi hain (The railways and postal system constitute the backbone of India),” he tells one interviewer. Seen in the context of Singh’s daily beat, though, post is as much the connective tissue of the country as its spine.

26 May 2014

WELCOME TO OUR WORLD

At the heart of the most extreme missions are the exceptional pilots who experience daring feats on a daily basis and are prepared to entrust their security only to the most high-performing instruments.

At the heart of the most extreme missions is the Breitling Avenger.

A concentrated blend of power, precision and functionality, Avenger models boast an ultra-sturdy construction and water resistance ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 feet. These authentic instruments for professionals are equipped with selfwinding movements chronometercertified by the COSC – the highest official benchmark in terms of reliability and precision. Welcome to the sphere of extremes. Welcome to the Breitling world.

B R E I TL I NG.COM

SUPER AVENGER II