SHASHI THAROOR
“The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi and His India” by Shashi Tharoor;Published by Aleph; Pages 504; Price Rs.799/-
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Shashi Tharoor’s latest book probes Modi’s failures more than his manifestly paradoxical personality and performance. Most of the 50 disjointed essays of the book harp on Modi’s failures. In his introduction Tharoor calls it an effort made by “a fair-minded Opposition MP looking back at the Modi years”.
Many will agree with him when he writes: “The liberal mask has long since fallen off. The gap has widened. The result is another paradox: a prime minister of lofty ambition, laid low by underachievement.”
In the section ‘Moditva and Misgovernance’, Tharoor can scarcely be contradicted when he questions the PM’s empty claim about ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance’. But one can ask : “But weren’t these and other examples of mis-governance true also of the previous Congress (UPA) government?” Tharoor is eloquently silent on the shortcomings of his own party’s long period of governance. This does make his book one-sided.
He deplores every aspect of Modi’s five year term. Government and the opposition see each other as sworn enemies in all areas of politics and national life. Finding a lasting solution to the Kashmir issue and normalising India-Pakistan relations pose the greatest challenge. Tharoor’s own self-contradictions in his piece ‘The India-Pakistan Yo-Yo’ are very clear. He disapproves of his party colleague Mani Shankar Aiyar’s oft-repeated stand on “uninterruptible” talks with Islamabad “even if new terrorist strikes emanating from Pakistan were to occur”. He also writes: “Insisting that Pakistan must change fundamentally before India can make peace with it is not particularly realistic. A creative Indian government must seize on whatever straws in the wind float its way from Pakistan to explore the prospects of peace.”
On the one hand, he “requires us to see the Pakistani military not just as the problem, but as a vital element of the solution”. But he advocates that “we should open our doors and hearts to Pakistanis who have nothing to do with the military establishment”. In the same breath, he endorses Modi’s manifestly hawkish line: “Punish each incident of violence by freezing official talks or by surgical strikes” and “We must not be deluded into making concessions, whether on Kashmir or any other issue.”
Tharoor is aware that “the two countries came extremely close to a definitive conclusion on a number of pending issues, including Kashmir when Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Dr. Manmohan Singh were India’s prime ministers and General Pervez Musharraf was Pakistan’s president.
Narendra Modi is undoubtedly a paradoxical man. He gives voice to a number of liberal ideas (such as the constitution being his Holy Book and Sab Ka Saath, Sab Ka Vikas), while at the same time tolerating the most illiberal elements in Indian society, who are his political supporters. Again, Modi is proud about his effective governance but blatantly by his silence condones the worst aspects of mis-governance—communal riots, lynchings, the violence of gau-rakshaks,etc.
Is Modi a noble, selfless leader acting in the interests of his countrymen or an autocratic, right-wing bigot who is interested only in power and converting plural India into a Hindu Rashtra? Or a via-media ? Tharoor attempts to answer these questions about a leader who is at once worshipped and attacked.
The book is divided into five sections comprising fifty chapters. The first section takes a close look at Modi’s life and times. The other four sections look at key aspects of the way in which Modi’s government functions and the lasting and often deleterious impact it has had on Indian society, major institutions, the economy, foreign policy and our fundamental values. Shashi has painted a fascinating portrait of a controversial person. The book is undeniably a thorough account of India’s most complex Prime Minister .
Tharoor’s Section “The Modi-fication of India’’ contains 15 chapters. He raises valid concerns regarding dubious plans and sporadic attempts at historical distortion, rewriting and planting of questionable facts by elements within the Indian Right who treat history as a political project. However, he weakens his argument by swallowing the ideologically convenient accounts of India’s past offered by Left-leaning historians in school and university texts.
The Paradoxical Prime Minister is not backed up by research. It is a "Book of the Moment". Most points seem current affairs revisited. Chapters on communal violence, mob lynching and cow vigilantism are media narratives. He scarcely thinks it possible that there can be another side of the working and challenges of genuine and law-abiding cow protection groups, and how they are striving to shield a way of life and cattle-based rural economies.
Cow protection was advocated by Mahatma Gandhi and Dayanand Saraswati and others. Gandhi, in his writings in Young India had regarded cow protection as an essential part of Hinduism and the duty of all Hindus. Dayanand Saraswati, whom Tharoor credits with teaching “inclusive and self-interrogating Hinduism”, founded the first Gaurakshini Sabha of modern India in 1882.
The chapter on the Modi government’s alleged attempts to push Hindi meanders and does so with bits of media reporting. It lacks the context of Hindi’s evolution in national consciousness while trying to push in an alarmist subtext of insidious Hindi nationalism. In fact, it was more envisaged in the form of the link language, something Gandhi supported as an idea in his writings as well in his chairmanship of two sessions of Hindi Sahitya Sabhas.
Tharoor’s Section on Modi’s poor performance in governance has brief chapters on a variety of subjects such as Institutions, Parliament, matters of justice, cutting red-tape and not laudable state of Swachh Bharat.
Dealing with economic subjects Tharoor chooses issues like the dismal rate of job creation and dramatic measures like demonetisation to expose the Modi government’s key failures. He relies on data and analysis offered by different experts as well as official documents. There isn’t anything new here which one may not come across in the usual news and analysis cycle.
The Modi government’s failures in the conduct of international relations, particularly after the glow of initial promise in its engagement with big powers and its neighbours, is covered in the last section. Modi’s initial investment of personal energy in foreign affairs impresses Tharoor .He says elements of change, in foreign policy have largely led to setbacks, while elements of continuity with India’s traditional foreign policy positions have brought rewards for the current foreign policy establishment too.
The book cries out for a good editor.There is no thematic cohesiveness. Different chapters float like jetsam and flotsam. Sometimes the book seems like Rambles of an absent-minded Professor,
When new marketing strategies for books veer from bizarre book trailers to courting controversy on social media, politician and former diplomat Shashi Tharoor chose to promote his latest title, The Paradoxical Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his India, through a device made familiar by his Twitter forays: a long, mildly baffling word.
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Tharoor has frequently been in the eye of a storm for making remarks that are shocking. He described Modi as a scorpion sitting on a Shivalingam.
Anyone interested in recent Indian politics and history should read this book.
P.P.Ramachandran.
13/01/2019.
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