Can Modi silence voices of freedom and fraternity?

The media space has shrunk to the extent that all the newspapers cover only an event that is proposed to happen in Ayodhya on January 22, 2023. It has occupied entire spaces in newspapers and TV channels. Channels have transformed themselves into religious broadcasters. Lamenting the trend, Sanjay K Jha, a senior journalist from Delhi, twits whether the event takes us to greater heights of culture and civilization; to truth and justice; to sacrifice and civility. Such voices are rare in the otherwise messy space of social media. The 10-year rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pushed India into an intoxication where insanity replaces sanity and logic gives way to dogma. Jha refers to cover-page advertisements in important newspapers in the country that appeal to the countrymen to make all the people chant Sri Ram. Is a senior journalist’s worry meaningless? Have words such as justice, equality, fraternity, and love lost their meanings?

To make the campaign a success, the media is working overtime. What is the objective? Is there any doubt that the entire focus is on the 2024 Lok Sabha elections? The scale and extent of the campaign are unprecedented. It has surpassed all previous attempts to use religion to win elections. There is nothing new in the fact that the BJP has been projecting itself as the champion of the Hindu cause. It has also been portrayed that all other political parties indulged in appeasing Muslims. However, for the first time, the party is unhesitatingly portraying them as enemies of Hindus. The consecration of the Sri Ram idol in the Ayodhya Temple has become a tool to brand all other political organizations that deny the ideology of Hinduism as enemies of Hindus. The decision of political parties to boycott the function at Ayodhya is being accused of Sri Ram. This is a repeat of what they did in the run-up to the 2019 elections. All those who had asked uncomfortable questions about the Pulwama attack on the Border Security Forces or the surgical strike on Balakot in Pakistan were branded as anti-national people. Will the same trick work again?

The comparison of two elections only reveals that Prime Minister Modi has been banking on emotional issues. He cannot go beyond the ideology of Hinduism. Perhaps the 2014 elections were the last to be fought on real issues such as corruption and development. Modi had promised corruption-free governance. He had promised to bring back black money stashed in Swiss banks. He had promised employment and prosperity. With the help of the media, he could project Gujarat as an ideal State. When we look back and analyze the inequality and hunger in Gujarat, we are astonished to see how misinformed and ignorant we were! The state is infested with a high proportion of hunger and malnutrition. There is stark inequality between rural and urban people. Marginalized sections of society have a low rate of education and employment. However, society is too polarised to elect secular parties such as the Indian National Congress. They prefer a government that treats minorities shabbily.

Can the model of governance that has been in use in Gujarat for over two decades be established at the national level? Can India be subjected to the kind of division Gujarat has been made to accept? It is certainly not easy to answer. However, one thing is clear: there is a counter-narrative, and that counter-narrative is not monolithic in its expression. It has different sheds and heterogeneous expressions. The most potent of them is coming from the Indian National Congress, the grand old party of the country. What Rahul Gandhi is trying to build up through his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra is the narrative of equality, fraternity, sovereignty, and justice. This could be seen as an attempt to build a strong secular narrative as opposed to the communal narrative of Hinduism. “I think those who are faithful maintain a personal relationship with religion. They use religion to shape their lives. People who publicly demonstrate their religiosity and who wear religion on their chests are trying to exploit religion for benefits. I don’t use my religion for political gain. Not interested. But I follow the principles of religion in leading my life,” he said in Nagaland.

"I behave with people with humility; respect them; don’t show arrogance when somebody approaches me. I don’t spread hate. That’s Hinduism for me. I follow it in my life. But I don’t have to advertise it on my shirt. Those who don’t believe in religious principles need to advertise it,” he said.

This is what Mahatma Gandhi believed in. Gandhi claimed himself to be a Santani Hindu, yet he never found any religion to be an enemy. He tried to learn from all religions. This is undoubtedly way beyond respecting other religions. His prayer meetings had citations from all religions. His religion had no place for sectarianism.

“When you spent 2 million gold coins to build that grand temple of yours, that was the day when God pronounced, ‘My eternal home is lit by everlasting lamps, in the midst of an azure sky. In my home, the foundations are built with the values of truth, peace, compassion, and love. This poverty-stricken puny miser,who could not provide shelter to his own homeless subjects,does he really fancy he can give me a home?’ / That is the day God left that temple of yours. And joined the poor beside the roads, under the trees. Like the emptiness of the froth in the vast seas, your mundane temple is hollow. It is just a bubble of wealth and pride.” Rabindranath Tagore has written.

Will the fight to preserve the essence of India that was dreamt of by Mahatma Gandhi die down in the current noise?

(The author is a senior journalist. He has experience of working with leading newspapers and electronic media including Deccan Herald, Sunday Guardian, Navbharat Times and Dainik Bhaskar. He writes on politics, society, environment and economy)