Harsimran Kaur ON  Dec 27, 2023, IN BOOK REVIEW, Modi And India: 2024 and the Battle for Bharat By Rahul Shivshankar and Siddhartha Talya–Non Fiction

Rating: 4/5

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has dived deep into the river with his win in the state elections 2023 in the ‘Hindi Heartland’; he has come to afloat with a rather brimming swim to the shore. The congress is thus seen locking the barn after the horse has escaped.

Is this all a prelude to the rightful aggrandizement to the Lok Sabha election 2024? Has the derring do of the BJP cavalcade paid off unequivocally signaling the prescriptive pastiche of ‘Hindu Rashtra’? Or, ‘convenient secularism’ is ready to ricochet the prescriptive ‘minority appeasement’ thus laying off the consanguinity of cataclysmic invasions?

So, how do we see a ‘Bharat’ after the results of the Lok Sabha elections 2024? It could mount to a strait-laced yet soporific ‘civilization’ panjandrum where drums beat a staccato of ‘Hindutva Hubris’; it’s like lets dig out the ancient Hindu morals locked somewhere in the ‘Vedas’ and ‘Puranas’ to ideologically suppress the de trop. This could very well be the outcome of a ‘BJP massive win’, and let’s accept that the Modi Government has been a deus ex machina for the ‘Hindu Majority’, setting ablaze the despondency arising from the ‘temple tales’ brusquely invaded by the ‘Mughal Maraud’.  

If the book ‘Modi & India—2024 and the Battle for Bharat’ has to be defined in one word, it would be ‘unapologetic’. It’s not that easy to disinter past chronicles to assiduously fragment a political party’s ideological impulse that flows undistruptedly through moral ravines finally finding its way to the vast stream of exclusivity. The book does that!

The BJP today has stewed its apple rather cautiously. Why does the minority perpetuity looks non-pulsed today especially the Muslim community? Polemics doing the rounds tell a tale of ‘Intolerant Secularism’ caparisoned as ‘Spiritual Secularism’. If that’s the flavor being stewed, then we are dismissing the ethos of plurality and thereby nudging a hand to enter into a civilization sinuous of ‘Bharat Bhagya’ so intrinsically woven into the ‘Hindu’ fabric. 

It is all an assessment rather than a judgment; the authors are quick to term ‘BJP’ under PM Modi as the soi-disant reformist. The abrogation of Article 370 and the promulgation of CAA have put the Muslim community at the ripper’s edge. What causes such boundation of leaving one community groping in the dark? It is an ideology that the incumbent government magnifies to please its own structural belief; in case of BJP it’s the liability to get off the imperialistic tendencies of any kind, and solipsistically govern a ‘Rajya’ that sits on civilizational duets.

It’s important to then talk about the ‘Dharma’ of the ‘Raja’; the book so conscientiously validates. As Jawaharlal Nehru quotes in the book, ‘Discovery of India’,

‘If India was to be secular, stable and a strong state, our first consideration must be to give absolute fair play to our minorities, and thus to make them feel completely at home in India’.

Let’s not forget that in the post-independence era, if Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the then deputy Prime Minister, did question the allegiance of Muslims to the nation because of ‘Kashmir’ and ‘Hyderabad’ conundrum, the ‘Modi Sarkar’ is no lenient to carry the scrimmage further. When we talk about ‘Dharma’, we require ‘Dhariya (patience)’ too to create a land where religion is not a paramour to the political cuddle. Let’s not misunderstand; the authors here are not being propagators but readily take in the examples of warfare starlets like ‘Maharaja Ranjit Singh’ and the ‘Marathas’ who believed in ‘integrative kingship’ and ‘Dhariya Dharma’.

Also, we cannot leave the fact behind that too much of religion in the political manifesto has tainted Secularism. All we hear today is the scrimmage around the ‘Ram Temple’ in Ayodhya. It’s a moment of carnivalesque for the entire nation but the ground reality engenders a priggish majoritism. Hasn’t the demolition of mosques become an arpeggio of a puritanical mindset? Power has often played the notes of invective brutalism; the invaders if usurped the grounds of faith, don’t we now see the same callousness in the regiment of power, through our own personal experience, that consumes us to a level of scarcity of affection. ‘Whataboutery’ comes as an appeal promising an ‘intolerant secularism’. 

If that’s the expectation from the Modi government if they win in the 2024 elections, then some discernibility needs to come forth; the ‘Hindu Civilizational’ carapsse burrowing the minority with ease and sensitivity. The ‘Dharma’ now calls for inclusivity, peruse of familiarity and soft-handling of the ‘palimpsest Hindu culture’.

The book raises an important quest; can it be possible to be tolerant without being ‘Secular’?

I feel that it’s not easy in a country like India where ethnicity of language and culture speaks of nationalistic pride. A dominant religion, of course, makes the first cut at the corner; its beliefs spread like a vulture carcassing the sky, limiting its shadow to the believers, the rest in behest of mercy!

We really don’t want all this happening! If we still take in the same confidence from countries like US and UK where dominant religion is Christianity and the concomitant laws surrounding it, the ‘chapter’ in the book evokes the reasoning of being ‘tolerant’.  If we can do that, a certain set of Hindu civilizational panjandrum will not pinch.

The reality is also that the non-Hindus are intimidated by the concept of ‘Hindu Rashtra’; it seems like a tyrannical symposium for them. They feel insecured and immiscible. In a prelude to the Lok Sabha elections 2024, Secularism therefore feels eroded. The Bharat—India castellation finds its reasons to perish, the former in the atavistic and the latter battles the imperialistic fusillade.  Whatever the ethos, beliefs and values, Secularism is a philosophy that helps the human existence to flourish irrespective of one’s nationalistic pride and allegiance to the land.

So are we looking at a new horizon, a new Bharat? The decisive factor for a new ‘India’ or ‘Bharat’ is compassion for the minority and they in turn are the impulsion to lead the country keeping aside their impressionistic impulses.

TAKE AWAY

The book reasons the entire foundation of ‘Secularism’ and how a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ can be more tolerant.