Every country is confronted with certain choices when it goes to the polls. But India it seems is poised on the brink of something far more cataclysmic. Narendra Modi is not just a politician. He is now a "moral line of no return".
"It seems that, in the race towards higher GDP, the majority of India is willing to inject itself with the steroids of bigotry and ruthlessness. Ethics be damned," writes Thane Richard in an opinion piece for Quartz.com called "India crosses the moral line of no return if Narendra Modi becomes prime minister."
"Is it extreme to compare electing the BJP (with Modi at its head) to electing the Nazi party with Hitler as its chancellor?" wonders Richard. Then he answers his own question. "Maybe, but it is eerily similar in many ways."
Richard is the founder of Dabba, an independent digital radio station covering Indian politics and culture. He is an American but spent a few years in India, studying for a bit at St. Stephen's in New Delhi and working for awhile with Mahindra and Mahindra.
Richard is entitled to his opinion. Indeed there are many reasons why Indians should think long and hard about a Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But one must make a cogent argument against Modi. Just playing the big bad Hitler card is lazy scaremongering. Even worse, it does Modi's opponents no favours because it simply does not work.
People just do not respond to that kind of moral blackmail. It feels even more sanctimonious when it comes from someone outside India. By 2004 it was widely known that George W. Bush had invaded Iraq on false pretences. There were no WMDs stashed there. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 though many Americans were confused about that. Many American liberals threatened to move to Canada if Bush was re-elected. Should that not have been a "moral line of no return" for Americans"? Yet Americans voted for Bush in even greater numbers than they had during the hanging-chad victory of 2000. Four years later that same country elected a Barack Obama to office.
Narendra Modi. AFP.
All that goes to prove is that democracy follows its own logic separate from the moral compass of the pundits. And the breast-beating about a "moral line of no return" for India is a double standard because other countries seem to happily go back and forth between liberals and conservatives, autocrats and democrats without drawing the same kind of moral judgement. Italy, anyone? It's as if coming from the nation of Gandhi, India must be held to some kind of higher moral standard of electoral righteousness.
Richard writes that at least Germany had the excuse of being a shambles when it chose a Hitler. India, on the other hand, has "not just lost a war, or recently faced hyperinflation, or had her national pride stomped on by embarrassing terms of surrender." But in fact, it was an American presidential campaign which gave us the immortal winning line "It's the economy, stupid." That helped Bill Clinton unseat George H. W. Bush.
People want a better life for themselves and their children. And in elections all over the world, people choose candidates who they believe will give them that. That's nothing to be ashamed about. Modi's opponents need to articulate a cogent argument about why they feel he cannot give them that better life, or puncture his much-ballyhooed Gujarat development model.
But that does not mean Indians' hunger for a better life is automatically "greed without regard for cost". Other countries get to vote according to their pocketbooks. Which candidate will be better for the economy is a routine question in American polls. Why should Indians be obliged to vote as if they are voting for the Nobel Peace Prize?
One can understand Richard's frustration when an elegantly-dressed desi woman in Detroit tells him "Even if Narendra Modi was involved in the Gujarat riots, I don't care. His economic work wins out. I will vote for him." But equally well-dressed women went out and voted for Rajiv Gandhi and gave him a massive mandate immediately after the bloodbath of 1984. One terrible travesty cannot be used to give another horrific tragedy a pass. Modi should be held accountable for what happened in Gujarat under his watch, whether they be sins of commission or omission. And he has certainly not answered his critics satisfactorily. But communal violence in India did not begin with Gujarat 2002 and it certainly did not end there. Gujarat 2002 is a huge blot, it can even be a "deal breaker" as Richard dubs it, but let's not pretend it's a singular blot in Indian history.
Just as Richard remembers that woman in Detroit, I remember a long impassioned conversation with friends about the prospects and dangers of a Modi prime ministership. Finally a friend's wife turned around and said "I understand everything. But tell me, if not him, who should I vote for? Rahul? Hasn't the Congress been there long enough?"
Modi's opponents have to face the simple fact that one of the reasons Modi's candidature is making waves is that they have failed to present credible alternatives to him. That is why many seized upon Arvind Kejriwal with such relief after his New Delhi victory. They hoped that they had found in him the giant-killer that a Rahul Gandhi clearly was not. By fixating on Modi the Terrible, Richard ignores the basic precept of an election – one chooses among the options on offer. Just as once Americans had to choose between a cocky Bush and an awkward John Kerry and chose the former. Many longed wistfully for a Bill Clinton then but alas, Clinton was not in the running.
Modi by campaigning early and campaigning hard is trying to create an aura of inevitability around his candidature. That needs to be punctured. Documentarian Rakesh Sharma has released a dozen clips of speeches made by Modi post-2002. He tells Scroll.in those clips prove "Modi's more communal utterances have disappeared online. There's been a whitewash and a PR makeover of his image." Those are facts that deserve to be taken up, discussed and debated. But just trotting out the Hitler bogeyman will not do it.
Now even Rahul Gandhi is bringing up the Hitler analogy comparing Modi (without naming him) to Hitler who "was the biggest arrogant who thought people had no wisdom and there was no need to listen to them." Hitler's arrogance was not his biggest problem. And Rahul's grandmother was no shrinking violet herself. But Rahul would do better to sell himself as a candidate rather than try and sell the fear of Modi.
What neither Richard nor Rahul seem to get is that the Hitler analogy is shorthand for death marches, concentration camps and gas chambers. Even those who see Modi as hardline Hindu think that is too far-fetched and hysterical in 2014 India.
That kind of fearmongering does not even work among Muslims. As Hasan Suroor writes in Firstpost "Muslims don't so much fear Modi as they hate him." In fact, he goes on to say "most Muslims have sufficient faith in the inherent secularism and moderation of the vast majority of Hindus who, they firmly believe, will not allow Modi to run amuck."
It's ironic that unlike many wagging their fingers from outside India, Muslims in India seem to have more faith in India's democracy and not need to subject it to the Modi litmus test.
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