I Loved Modi’s Speech

At Madison Square Garden.  Just like him, I know my audience. If I don’t say that, you won’t read any further. But it’s also true. As speeches go, there was nothing more impassioned, nothing more motivational that Indians of any stripe have possibly heard, since Indira Gandhi.  And that brings me to a few points I want to raise, to add to the electrifying conversations already out there on television and Twitter.

Three things come to mind. First, a small phrase was slipped into a sentence about Mahatma Gandhi, harking back to history and to a time when “there have always been super-heroes rescuing us from occupation…”  There was a part of this sentence that I fear may go into our sub-conscious unexamined and I want to pull it out. This was when Modi said – “We were occupied by the British and before that, for twelve hundred years, by one power or another…” (Watch selected portion at 27.46 seconds.)

Our new Prime Minister was speaking to an audience he assumes shares his idea of Indian history. Where the entry of the slave kings starting with Qutb-ud-din Aibak in 1206 AD are seen as an “occupying force.”  Historians trained in the business of ferreting out facts from the past as distinct from hyperbole and current-day political agendas point out that this is, in fact, historically inaccurate. Richard Eaton, in many ways the guru of writing on medieval Indian history: currently rapidly at work re-writing the old text book version of the Penguin History of Medieval India by Percival Spear and has countless books on medieval India to his name; says it like this:

“By the mid-eleventh century a major strand of political thought in the Persian-speaking world had decoupled Iranian conceptions of kingship and governance from Islam, or indeed from any religion…This de facto separation of Religion and State was made explicit by Ibn Balkhi in his Fars-nama…” (Power, Memory, Architecture – Richard Eaton and Phillip Wagoner, OUP 2014.)

Eaton quotes Balkhi to prove his point – “There is no kingdom without an army, no army without wealth, no wealth without material prosperity, and no material prosperity without justice.” Eaton explains this was the beginning of a Persian cosmopolis where the ideal ruler had to ensure the well-being of diverse religious groups; not just of Muslims.  For a history buff, or even a curious reader, attention to facts belie the often-trotted out idea that India was “occupied by Muslims”. What fits better with the evidence on ground – in temples built by everyone from the slave kings to Aurangzeb (yes, he built scores of temples) is the idea that there was a period when Muslim kings brought a Persian system of justice into an Indian context and there was a diffusion of cultures, roles and identities.

In an article in the Journal of Asian Studies, Eaton explains; historians are not masterchefs in a kitchen, because people seldom stick to recipes or scripts in real life. McDonalds came to India and had to re-invent itself with the McAloo Tikki Burger, cooked in vegetable fat. So why do we imagine that the past was somehow devoid of these layers? Of two-way exchanges?

And this brings me to the second point in Modi’s MSG speech I want to focus on.  It’s overall takeaway – invoking pride and nationalism in us. One brave TV anchor even dared to suggest it was jingoism.  Don’t get me wrong. I am not knocking the sentiment entirely. Like Kavita Krishnamurthy and L Subramaniam who performed the song from the 1997 Subhash Ghai film “Pardes”, I also “Love my India“. But like many middle class people, I also grew up dealing with a 360-degree version of the word pride. And know only too well, from having dealt with the Big Male Ego at close quarters that it has another side.  Of defensiveness, of the need to congratulate oneself and the need to be surrounded at all times by people who feed that pride, that ego. It’s a space that is easily hurt. And then its other, violent side surfaces. This is the India we live in. Proud and macho. And violent.

After a decade of a dud-government that only took our pride and trashed it. A government that did not engage. Did not perform. And lived on self-satisfied self-congratulatory and outmoded old-world power tropes, I am glad they have been shown the door. However, I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea that I have to at all times be the chest-thumping nationalist with an easily-bruised ego. I would rather aspire to another word: self-assuredness.  It’s largely old-world bourgeoisie sentiment and politics, I know. It clashes directly with the aspirations of New India. True that. But can this New India also aspire to reach a space where it is not so defensive about itself or its pride so easily wounded?

Self-assuredness is very, very hard. As a member of the aspirational middle class, I know I don’t have self-assuredness on most days, but I aspire to it. I think that is the only word that can take us past our darker, more violent selves. It’s the part of us that has the ability to take criticism on the chin. And not jump on every Tweet we don’t like, as if we have to gag the Twitterer in question.  That is not the kind of India Modi was addressing. It possibly exists in small quarters and silent squares away from Madison. The people who don’t need to shout at the world to be heard.

And that brings me to the third part of Modi’s speech. His reference to Gandhi.  In 2019, he said, India will celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of the Mahatma. “He gave us our freedom, but what have we given him back?” said Modi, pressing on all the emotional buttons of TV, Twitter and live audiences around the world.  “Gandhi stood for two things. Freedom. And cleanliness. Can’t we give him a clean India by 2019?” said Modi.  Listening to this speech, were groups of Muslim men and women dressed in Islamic uniform – headscarves and skull caps in place, in groups, together. The cameras deliberately cut to them through the speech. As if in so doing, the fears of the skeptics could be allayed. “See – there they are – the Muslims.”  And I would love a journalist out there on this big story in New York to get me the back story on this. Why are all the Muslims huddled together as if they all decided: “wait, we must go in a group and we must wear our scarves and caps”. Instead of this deliberate over-emphasis on the visual architecture, could Modi have not picked on the thing that Gandhi really stood for, over and above cleanliness? A religious syncretism between Hindus and Muslims? Surely, Madison Square would be the perfect venue to slip in a small phrase that says – “Gandhi stood for communal harmony and I invite Indians of all religions to celebrate his 150th year together?”

And then again, perhaps not. Perhaps it’s too early to expect a rising India to accommodate something that serves as an ugly reminder of the time Modi was denied his US visa. Right now, no criticism vis-à-vis the man of the hour is welcome. Someday however, I hope aspiring India can move past pride and constantly-bruised egos to a more secure identity. A more plural one. And then maybe Modi will say what that India wants to hear. Until then I am certain, this post will attract all the negative trolling us aspiring Indians are so good at.