Shri Narendra Modi is for all, not just for one Family: S Sekhar Narendra Modi will be the BJP -led NDA’s Prime Ministerial candidate for next Lok Sabha election putting to rest many months of speculation and many years of expectations. As I write down this column on the significance of this moment, three thoughts come to my mind. First is on the manner in which the BJP went about arriving at his candidacy. Second is on the nature of his candidacy and what it means to both the establishment in Delhi and the status quo within Delhi. Lastly, my thoughts go to what the challenge posed by Narendra Modi means to life cycle stage of our Republic. For the first time, in post-independence India, we are seeing a major political party settling the question of its next leader by bowing to pressures and the wishes of its workers, sympathisers and supporters. This decision by the BJP on the choice of its next leader has not come about on account of the said leader’s birth into specific family, nor on account of said leader’s familial relationships into specific family, nor on basis of some kind of backroom intrigue. It is a direct result of demand of rank and file of the party making it loud and clear to well-entrenched permanent leadership in Delhi on kind of change they wished to see within the party. Much hyperbole has been seen within Delhi-based media on the role of RSS in this decision. Ram Madhav, RSS spokesperson, put it very eloquently and unambiguously that even RSS was merely reflecting the mood of the country on the kind of change it wished to see within the BJP. Leadership transitions within political parties in India ahead of a major election or in aftermath of have rarely been a smooth affair. In most occasions, it is mortality that has settled leadership questions rather than a democratic process. Disgusting manner in which Sonia ousted then Congress president Sitaram Kesri is still fresh in memory of many minds. Even Vajpayee’s ascent within the erstwhile Jan Sangh was not without its share of controversy with the expulsions of the then stalwarts like Prof Balraj Madhok and Dr Mouli Sharma. While Communist parties have had a relatively more democratic history of transitions process that plays out in smoke filled backrooms can hardly be described as transparent. Of regional parties, less said the better with most of them being the personal fief of one family or one leader. Modi’s ascent to the helm of BJP ahead of the next LS election thus represents closest we have got to a nationwide primary settling the debate on Prime Ministerial candidate. While the debate on Modi within the mainstream media has always been loud and polarised, decibel levels went many notches up back in September of 2011 when Modi embarked on his Sadbhavana Fast – the first time a national TV audience caught a glimpse of Modi and listened to him with rapt attention. In his speech at the conclusion of the three-day Sadbhavana Fast, Narendra Modi made two points, which are of immense significance today. In that speech Narendra Modi while lamenting that India had forgotten to dream big said these famous words that today have come to inspire his Mission 272 plus. He had said: “If there are no dreams then how will there be a determination to achieve them”. In the same speech, he said that no matter what his critics, his detractors and his political rivals thought of him, he would continue to challenge status quo, raise the bar on performance. It is this attitude of Modi that has unsettled establishment status-quoists in Delhi across mainstream media, political establishment, Left leaning intellectual ecosystem that has come to dominate much of public discourse. It was telling that in December of 2012 when Modi took the stage at the Khanpur office of BJP in Ahmedabad to celebrate the victory of the BJP in the just concluded Assembly elections. Modi dedicated a good amount of the speech to the Pundits in Delhi reminding them how his brand of politics was a break from both the norm and the past. Today, Modi marks the most potent political challenge from outside Delhi. He is the first leader with neither a permanent residential address in Delhi nor a permanent political base in Delhi to rise and become the Prime Ministerial candidate for a major Political formation ahead of a General Election. As both a rank outsider and as a sitting Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s Prime Ministerial candidacy shatters a glass ceiling that has long prevented a linear political path from the States to Delhi. It thus sets an important precedent for the future by which sitting CMs and performant leaders in the States can become challengers for the highest office in the country through a natural pre-poll process. Lastly, it must be pointed that for first time since independence, the principal political actor from one of two principal political formations in India belongs to post-independence generation. It would be pertinent to note that India has to date not been governed by a PM who was born after the year 1947 when India had gained its independence after centuries of British rule. Current incumbent PM Singh was born in pre-partition India, present day Pak in 1932. His predecessor Vajpayee was born in 1924. India’s youngest PM to date — late Rajiv also born before 1947. Thus for almost all of past 66 years, India has only seen governance at national level by leaders whose earliest memories, if not life experiences, were shaped by events leading up to Indian independence including partition. For decades now, nostalgia of pre-partition India has played a strong influential role on almost every PM in office. Perhaps for first time, in 2013-2014, India will witness possibility of a PM born after independence unburdened by any memories of partition being chosen to lead a young, impatient republic with emergence of Modi as the BJP-led NDA’s leader.
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 13:36:23 +0000