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The colour saffron

It was the Nehru dynasty’s turn to experience democracy as a form of revenge. As a result, the BJP has been swept into power and the Congress is out in the dumps. Modi’s critics portrayed him as a divisive anti-secularist figure, in the service of some billionaires. But all that failed to calm the people’s anger over a decade of ineffectual Congress rule tainted by widespread corruption.

Simply put, a critical mass of Indian voters, not all of them Hindutva adepts, reached the assessment that the Congress was a spent force. Others saw the point in that reasoning and provided the pundits with enough data to predict the worst ever defeat for the dynasty. Still others simply followed the logic of voting usefully – in other words for the winning party.

The new BJP leader has a clear mandate to prove that he can fulfil his promise of serving the people, rather than vested interests. But never before has an Indian leader been elected with such widespread misgivings about his capacity to lead the people as one nation. For many, Modi will have to rid his communally tainted past and demonstrate that India can offer opportunities to its people regardless of caste or creed.

Modi’s success has upset the applecart of dynastic rule. The Aam Aadmi Party’s meteoric rise and fall in contrast looks like a side spectacle. Modi’s steady rise is a great example of a plain political worker reaching the top after decades of assiduous labour. This indeed is a quantum leap for a country like India that changes ever so slowly. Everybody should take note how a man of common origin, in a land of time-honoured myths, could create his own myth – liked by some and detested by others – and emerge victorious.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that misgivings abound in and around India about the policies the single-party majority with a professed Hindu preference would pursue domestically as well as on the international scene. Pakistan will be particularly sensitive to any sign of mood swings in Delhi. Projections in Pakistan vary from no major change to a gradual chill in Pakistan-India relations.

Nawaz Sharif has struck the right chord by congratulating Modi and inviting him to visit Pakistan. This was a good follow up to the private messages exchanged between the two sides to engage with each other after the Indian election. An opening towards Pakistan at an early stage in the BJP’s tenure will have a positive effect.

Is Modi aware of the desire of people on both sides to come closer or will he pay more heed to the threat perceptions woven by the Indian intelligence, a mirror reflection of similar analysis on this side? It is easy to remain bound within what a prominent member of our civil society terms misrepresentation of each other on both sides.

According to this fervent supporter of better relations between Pakistan and India, the people are warm-hearted, hospitable to the extent of being indulgent and curious about visitors from across the border. But this human warmth is constrained by policies at the official level and narratives run in the media that tend to inhibit good relations for a long time to come.

Agreed that the mood in India was hugely affected by the Mumbai episode. If the future was made dependent on the past, the Germans and the French would still require visas to visit each other. Pakistan’s civilian leadership has tried hard to normalise relations with India.

New Delhi’s Mumbai-centric rhetoric and cold attitude towards a sustained dialogue process have only strengthened the hawks on our side. The Indians are justified in demanding punishment for those behind the Mumbai attack. But so would be Pakistan in asking for punishing those who attacked the Samjhota Express.

Vajpayee, the BJP’s previous poet prime minister pressed for removing hurdles between India and Pakistan and conducted negotiations not only with Nawaz Sharif but with Pervez Musharraf despite Kargil, because he believed in a shared trajectory of peace and progress. The new poet prime minister may surprise his saffron-clad supporters by looking for ways of doing business with Pakistan.

On May 16, when Modi visited his mother to share the joy of his victory, he was clad in beige, with a tinge of olive green. That was meaningful and who knows, a subtle hint in the direction of all those feeling nervous about the victory of a life-long swayamsevak.

As prime minister, Modi may look for ways to adjust his discourse to the complex and diverse nature of a huge country. Nor can he remain oblivious to the geopolitics of the region and beyond. Problems will arise if Modi considers his election as a popular endorsement of some divinely ordained commitment to mother India. Deeply embedded in the Indian psyche, the attachment to Bharat mata or ‘mother India’ enable the Indians to cherish a biological link to their land. The idea is quite different from the Muslims attitude of feeling at home anywhere on earth. Iqbal wrote – Muslim hain hum watan hai sara jahan hamara.

Indian reluctance to accept Partition even after 1947 implied that mother India could not be divided. It is also reflected in the unbending stance about Kashmir being an integral part of India. The Pakistanis see that desire as India’s hegemonic ambition.

Modi may want to take the BJP’s electoral stance on Kashmir to its logical conclusion, by scrapping the territory’s special status under Article 370 of the Indian constitution. In case he tries to convert his declaratory policy into an operational plan, trouble aplenty lies ahead.

Email: saeed.saeedk@gmail.com

M. Saeed Khalid, "The colour saffron," The News. 2014-05-21.
Keywords: Political science , Political relations , Political issues , International relations , Democracy , Politicians , Muslims , Politics , CM Narendra Modi , PM Nawaz Sharif , Gen Musharraf , Pakistan , Germany , Kashmir , India , Delhi , BJP , AAP