Narendra Modi emerges as strong contender for PM's post; still constrained

Those who expected the Gujarat election results to serve as a tidal wave that Narendra Modi would ride to overwhelm other contenders for the prime minister’s post in his party and outside have been disappointed. Indisputably, winning a third successive time in a state election is a tremendous achievement. The fact that Modi dropped a couple of seats as compared to the 2007 tally does not take away from the magnitude of his achievement. Nor does it, at the same time, give him unstoppable political momentum of the kind he had hoped for. That did not prevent him from making his national ambitions clear in his victory speech, in which he also sought an oblique pardon for his errors, if any, from six crore Gujaratis. By not specifically excluding the 54-lakh Muslim population from those from whom he sought forgiveness, he has held out quenching sweetness for those who have been thirsting for a reason to forget the killings of 2002. By claiming that he owes his victory to ‘development’ that transcends caste and community, Modi wants to foster the narrative that sees growth and prosperity as being divorced from the practice and discourse of politics. The real world, however, is not so simple.

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In the 1930s, Stalin, Hitler and Roosevelt were all promoting vigorous development in their own countries, each to legitimise a different kind of politics and associated values. What politics is sought to be legitimised defines the political imperative of the development undertaken. Modi and the BJP have sought to legitimise the exclusive politics of Hindu majoritarianism, which offers Muslims security conditional on their suitable conduct rather than as a right devolving from their citizenship. This is what makes rates of growth political rather than mere matters of economics and arithmetic. Unless this politics is explicitly disowned, development cannot serve as a passport to power at the Centre, thanks to India’s teeming diversity. And since the Congress in Gujarat has wimpishly shrunk away from confronting the exclusivist politics that underlies growth and governance under Modi, the only surprise is that Narendra Modi faces any serious challenge at all in his state.