Tavleen Singh : Sun Aug 18 2013, 05:45 hrs
Had Rahul Gandhi made the speech Narendra Modi did last week, he would have been hailed as India's shining white hope. Had Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made this speech from the Red Fort, instead of the dreary one he did, it may have swept away the sense of gloom and doom that permeates the economy. Had any other chief minister made the speech, us political pundit types would have sat up and taken notice. But, since it was Modi, he had to be reviled. What he said was unexceptionable. So he had to be attacked on other grounds. Why did he need to steal the Prime Minister's show by making this speech on Independence Day? The truth is that August 15 lost its magic long ago and has been reduced to ceremonial tokenism of the worst kind. We need political leaders to make meaningful speeches on this day, but that this idea should have occurred to Modi is intolerable.
So much so that even his former mentor, the tireless Shri Lal Krishna Advani, made an immediate veiled attack on him by saying that Independence Day should be an occasion when political leaders should refrain from criticising each other. Why? Shri Advani then trotted off to Rashtrapati Bhavan and was seen cozying up to Sonia Gandhi at the President's Independence Day tea party. I found this particular detail interesting because of my conviction that the reason why us denizens of Lutyens's Delhi hate Modi so much is because he is a rank outsider. He comes from the wrong class and caste. He speaks little English. He dares to criticise the Dynasty we revere. And he exhibits a marked disdain for socialism and secularism. These two ideas are sacrosanct for those who have privileged access to that most exclusive of Indian private clubs: Lutyens's Delhi.
Not everyone who reaches Parliament or high levels of political power has automatic access to the club. You have to come from an important political family and you have to have attended the right kind of English-medium school. The heirs of important political leaders have easy access for these reasons. Not every bureaucrat has access but those of the right class are life members. High-flying hacks are always welcome and quickly learn the rules. You have to express political opinions that are 'secular' and 'liberal' and you have to make sure that you do not say bad things about the Dynasty. This is considered especially bad form. This is why, despite the obviously deleterious effects of dynastic democracy, you see few stories on the subject in the media.
Once you become a member of the club you find yourself invited on almost a daily basis to exclusive dinner parties in grand houses and fine hotels. At these events you will see politicians of different parties greet each other like old school friends, despite what they may have said to each other publicly that day in Parliament. And it is at these events that you will see famous media personalities included in conversations that are always 'off the record'. If you break the rules, as I love to, then you risk being abused on national television by Gandhi family devotees like the unpleasantly loudmouthed Mani Shankar Aiyar. But, that is another story and I am digressing.
In a column of this size, it is really possible to make only one point and the one I want to make this week is that it is not what Modi says that gets him into trouble. It is not what he did in 2002 that evokes such shivers of revulsion in Lutyens's Delhi. Rajiv Gandhi remained totally acceptable after 1984. It is who Narendra Modi is that is the problem.
He represents an India that has so far been carefully kept outside the closed doors of the Lutyens's Delhi club. A rough, angry, passionate new India that does not recognise private clubs or their rules and that threatens to tear down the walls that conceal the colonised elite, bred by the British Raj, that continues to control all the levers of political power in India.
Incredible though this may sound, the entire machinery of the Congress party is currently geared to finding ways of keeping Modi out of national politics. This endeavour has the complicit support of senior BJP leaders and this is why you now so often hear the Congress party's spokesmen publicly praise Mr Advani as a 'moderate' when till just the other day he was considered the man responsible for demolishing the Babri Masjid. The truth is that everyone, perhaps even Mr Advani himself, knows that a BJP campaign led yet again by him will almost certainly keep this party in opposition for another five years. But, at least this would prevent Narendra Modi from smashing down the gates of Lutyens's Delhi.
Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh
Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/an-outsider-in-a-private-club/1156563/1
Had Rahul Gandhi made the speech Narendra Modi did last week, he would have been hailed as India's shining white hope. Had Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made this speech from the Red Fort, instead of the dreary one he did, it may have swept away the sense of gloom and doom that permeates the economy. Had any other chief minister made the speech, us political pundit types would have sat up and taken notice. But, since it was Modi, he had to be reviled. What he said was unexceptionable. So he had to be attacked on other grounds. Why did he need to steal the Prime Minister's show by making this speech on Independence Day? The truth is that August 15 lost its magic long ago and has been reduced to ceremonial tokenism of the worst kind. We need political leaders to make meaningful speeches on this day, but that this idea should have occurred to Modi is intolerable.
So much so that even his former mentor, the tireless Shri Lal Krishna Advani, made an immediate veiled attack on him by saying that Independence Day should be an occasion when political leaders should refrain from criticising each other. Why? Shri Advani then trotted off to Rashtrapati Bhavan and was seen cozying up to Sonia Gandhi at the President's Independence Day tea party. I found this particular detail interesting because of my conviction that the reason why us denizens of Lutyens's Delhi hate Modi so much is because he is a rank outsider. He comes from the wrong class and caste. He speaks little English. He dares to criticise the Dynasty we revere. And he exhibits a marked disdain for socialism and secularism. These two ideas are sacrosanct for those who have privileged access to that most exclusive of Indian private clubs: Lutyens's Delhi.
Not everyone who reaches Parliament or high levels of political power has automatic access to the club. You have to come from an important political family and you have to have attended the right kind of English-medium school. The heirs of important political leaders have easy access for these reasons. Not every bureaucrat has access but those of the right class are life members. High-flying hacks are always welcome and quickly learn the rules. You have to express political opinions that are 'secular' and 'liberal' and you have to make sure that you do not say bad things about the Dynasty. This is considered especially bad form. This is why, despite the obviously deleterious effects of dynastic democracy, you see few stories on the subject in the media.
Once you become a member of the club you find yourself invited on almost a daily basis to exclusive dinner parties in grand houses and fine hotels. At these events you will see politicians of different parties greet each other like old school friends, despite what they may have said to each other publicly that day in Parliament. And it is at these events that you will see famous media personalities included in conversations that are always 'off the record'. If you break the rules, as I love to, then you risk being abused on national television by Gandhi family devotees like the unpleasantly loudmouthed Mani Shankar Aiyar. But, that is another story and I am digressing.
In a column of this size, it is really possible to make only one point and the one I want to make this week is that it is not what Modi says that gets him into trouble. It is not what he did in 2002 that evokes such shivers of revulsion in Lutyens's Delhi. Rajiv Gandhi remained totally acceptable after 1984. It is who Narendra Modi is that is the problem.
He represents an India that has so far been carefully kept outside the closed doors of the Lutyens's Delhi club. A rough, angry, passionate new India that does not recognise private clubs or their rules and that threatens to tear down the walls that conceal the colonised elite, bred by the British Raj, that continues to control all the levers of political power in India.
Incredible though this may sound, the entire machinery of the Congress party is currently geared to finding ways of keeping Modi out of national politics. This endeavour has the complicit support of senior BJP leaders and this is why you now so often hear the Congress party's spokesmen publicly praise Mr Advani as a 'moderate' when till just the other day he was considered the man responsible for demolishing the Babri Masjid. The truth is that everyone, perhaps even Mr Advani himself, knows that a BJP campaign led yet again by him will almost certainly keep this party in opposition for another five years. But, at least this would prevent Narendra Modi from smashing down the gates of Lutyens's Delhi.
Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh
Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/an-outsider-in-a-private-club/1156563/1
No comments:
Post a Comment