A 'mimetic rival' is a role model you seek to supplant or surpass. By your choice of 'mimetic rival' you reveal much about yourself. Modi chose Nehru, rather than Indira, as his mimetic rival because he wanted to be a three term P.M who didn't have to jail his opponents or use draconian measures against popular protests regarding deteriorating economic conditions.
Modi has succeeded. He will be a three term PM. But this has required the uprooting of Nehru's dynasty which had turned anti-Hindu, anti-Development and which was defeatist and supine in the face of terrorist and other challenges. This too has been a salutary development.
Scroll.in has published an op-ed by one Partha S Ghosh a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi. He is a year or two older than Modi. Yet despite his superior education, he has achieved absolutely nothing in his life save sing the praises of the Dynasty.
He writes condescendingly that
Narendra Modi was a fourteen-year-old boy when Jawaharlal Nehru died in 1964.
Modi went to a military school. He was 12 when the Chinese invaded. For obvious reasons, he would have had a low opinion of a leader who admitted that he had been living in a fantasy world.
He had no reason, therefore, to understand how Nehru governed India,
This is clearly false. Modi had a patriotic reason to understand how Nehru misgoverned India to such an extent that it had become incapable of feeding or defending itself. What's more, unlike Ghosh who had a safe career as a worthless academic, Modi's patriotic reason impelled him to so improve Governance that he himself came to rule India.
no sense of the fundamental challenges he faced as the country’s first Prime Minister,
Nehru confessed in 1962 that he had been living in a fantasy world. He chose to face imaginary challenges and the country paid the price.
nor of his major strengths and weaknesses as a leader and as an individual.
In 1962, Nehru told the people of Assam that they were on their own. Delhi could do nothing for them. That was true enough but only because Nehru was shit as a leader though he may have been a charming enough individual.
Nehru’s early years as Prime Minister were spent in the shadow of the Partition.
Which he caused. That defeatist cunt should have taken the League into the 1937 U.P Ministry. Since he was incapable of fighting, he should have taken the path of least resistance. Anyway, if the League had capable people, why not employ them for the betterment of all Indians? Why be a dog in the manger?
The arrival of millions of refugees from Pakistan, who sought both shelter and rehabilitation, stretched an already impoverished and insecure nation.
The country was impoverished and insecure because cunts like Nehru followed the crackpot Mahatma whose ideas about Economics and Defense were utterly shit. Cooperation with the British so as to learn how to do Famine Relief and to boost Food Production and to beef up the Army and develop a blue water Navy was the need of the hour. These worthless cretins preferred to tell stupid lies and then go meekly to jail.
Thanks to World War II, the national economy was already in shambles.
No. India was unscathed by War. Its manufacturing sector was booming. Had it pursued sensible policies it would have industrialized more rapidly than Japan. Sadly it got stuck with Gandhian stupidity compounded by Nehruvian imbecility.
Gandhi had clearly taken one too many blows to the skull. He was kray kray. But Nehru was sane. He knew plenty of Fabians. When Olivier became Secretary for India, Nehru should have gone to see him to work out a road map. Actually the thing already existed. Build up participatory democracy from the District and Provincial level. Don't, as Gandhi did, demand that the Brits transfer all power- including power over the Army- to the INC. Work with the Brits first to make dyarchy a success and then to get a strong Federal Center under what would become the 1935 Act. Nehru preferred to live in a fantasy world. Then Chou En Lai, who had resented Nehru patronizing him at Bandung, pricked his bubble. His fantasy world collapsed. He released Sheikh Abdullah and was preparing to hand over J&K to the Pakistanis. The 1965 War was his legacy. Sadly, Shastri proved pugnacious. Thus Nehru failed to destroy what he inherited from the Brits.
How did Nehru cope with these challenges? Young Narendra Modi doubtless had no clue.
Nehru did not cope with the Chinese challenge. He fell apart. This was evident even to 12 year olds- provided they attended a Military School. When you are invaded, you should strike a Churchillian note. Nehru was a Harrovian same as Churchill. But his was a rhetoric of despondency and despair. He wasn't saying the invaders would be killed. He was saying the invader would be pushed out the way the Brits were pushed out- i.e. after two hundred years. His heart might go out to the people of Assam but then Nehru wore his heart on his sleeve.
Any appreciation Modi may have had for Nehru’s travails
which were self-created
was likely further hamstrung by a lack of proper schooling.
Yet Modi is PM while Prof. Ghosh is a senile fool.
From what we know, straitened family circumstances meant that the young Modi was forced instead to eke out a living by selling tea with his father at the railway station.
Neech aadmi hai na? Ghosh Babu is getting BA, MA, PhD. Why people are not respecting this? Oh. It is because Ghosh Babu has shit for brains. Sad.
By the time he began wielding political power as Gujarat’s Chief Minister in 2001, Nehru’s ghost had lain dormant for 37 years and was seemingly well past its prime.
Ghosh Babu is knowing Inglis pherry gud. In Bihar, dormant ghost is referred to as being 'past its prime'. This is first class Inglis such as is spoken by tip-top Bhagalpur graduates.
Why Modi?
Of course, for a ghost, 37 years is a perfectly good age to start a career as a mischief-monger.
Ghosh Babu, it turns out, is a Bengali educated in Bihar- i.e. has a lower IQ than a buffalo.
In our childhood, we heard many stories in Bengali of Lord Clive’s ghost or Lord Wellesley’s ghost haunting the old mansions of Calcutta.
Though those dudes died in England. This stupid shithead has degrees in History. But Bengali ghost-stories are what stick in his mind. The fucker doesn't even know that Clive and Wellesley died in Engyland.
But the question remains, why should Nehru’s ghost choose Narendra Modi and no one else?
Modi was ambitious. Having done a good job as CM, he wanted to be PM. What sort of PM? The sort who'd keep winning elections. Which previous PM did that? Nehru. The trouble is Nehru's daughter had created a dynasty. Shitting on Nehru harms Rahul though, equally, having Rahul as your rival ensures your success.
After all, he had several potential subjects to prey upon over the years, each of whom was no less important as Prime Minister in their time than Modi is today.
Fuck off! Only Nehru was a three term PM. The truth is, had he retired on turning 70, his reputation may have been that of a Washington.
There have been six non-Congress-non-BJP Prime Ministers to rule India before Modi. They are Morarji Desai, Chaudhary Charan Singh, VP Singh, Chandra Shekhar Singh, IK Gujral and HD Deve Gowda. We might even include PV Narasimha Rao (1991-’96) in the list.
Only Modi is two-term and likely to be three-term. Nehru is the man to beat.
Although Rao belonged to the Congress, he was known to be an eyesore for Nehru’s legatees, most notably his grandson Rajiv Gandhi’s widow, Sonia Gandhi, who was then preparing to emerge as the godmother of the grand old party.
Kesri fucked up. India had had enough of stupid Bihari or UP Bhaiyya 'Young Turks'. Let them concentrate on kidnapping each other.
Sonia was Congress's best President ever. Rao was an embarrassment because he introduced Chandraswami to people like Kaunda who was very vocal about having been swindled. Rao's garrulity was made mock of by foreign diplomats. Ahmed Patel was smart and Manmohan was an excellent choice precisely because he looked and talked like an ancient Egyptian mummy. Sadly, Rahul is a mooncalf.
Nehru’s ghost, quite strangely, spared even Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the only other BJP Prime Minister of India, who governed from 1998 to 2004.
Nonsense! Vajpayee rose as Nehru's stock fell. That was when the fucker was alive. The truth is that Indira was better than her Dad. She had courage. She was a patriot. Like her mother, she was no atheist or pseudo-intellectual. While Nehru's daughter was alive, she represented his spirit- redeemed of the yellow streak. Rajiv was prepared to break with both Socialism and Secularism. Had he lived he'd have built the Ram Temple and India would have had 'pendulum politics'. His widow turned out to have better political instincts- or advisers. Sadly Rahul is a moon calf.
Rather, Vajpayee rarely missed an opportunity to recall with fondness his days with Nehru. At that time, he was an up-and-coming Jana Sangh politician who eventually became the party’s MP in the Second Lok Sabha (1957-’62) from the Balrampur constituency in Uttar Pradesh.
This was possible because of a reaction to INC's Socialist turn. However, Atal had to be content with a Rajya Sabha seat between '62 and '67.
After the massive dent in Nehru’s image following India’s defeat to China in 1962, Vajpayee did become a staunch critic. Even so, political criticism did not degenerate into personal disrespect of the man.
Because Atal was a windbag. Brahmin men often are. Look how Tamil Nadu has progressed since it marginalized male Brahmins. Females of all castes are fine.
This is what Vajpayee said on Nehru’s death: “Bharat Mata is stricken with grief today –
her pulpy breasts are trembling with sorrow
she has lost her favourite prince.
Such a sweet and cute 74 year old baby! Truly Mummyji is howling with sorrow.
Humanity is sad today – it has lost its devotee.
Donkeys too are grieving. They have lost their favorite interlocutor.
Peace is restless today – its protector is no more.
War, however, is laughing heartily and ordering 'burra pegs' all round.
The down-trodden have lost their refuge.
And refuge has lost its catamite.
The common man has lost the light in his eyes.
And light has lost its brown nose.
The curtain has come down....
If so why is this windbag still talking?
In the Ramayana, Maharashi Valmiki has said of Lord Rama that he brought the impossible together.
Also the dude had really long arms. He could scratch his knees without bending his spine.
In Panditji’s life, we see a glimpse of what the great poet said. He was a devotee of peace and yet the harbinger of revolution, he was a devotee of non-violence but advocated every weapon to defend freedom and honour.”
This is why Vajpayee couldn't get a second term. He was a windbag. Advani was made of sterner stuff but he was simply too old. Still if Rahul had stepped up to the plate, Advani would have led his party to defeat. The lion of Gir would have roared once or twice but then gone back to work.
All this naturally evokes a simple curiosity: why does Modi bait Nehru with such pathological fervour?
Because he wants to be a three term PM. Nehru achieved that by claiming to have delivered an India free of Brits. Modi is doing that by delivering 'Congress Mukht Bharat'. But this was only possible because Rahul is a mooncalf.
It is unlikely that Modi will oblige us with an answer.
Because there is no great mystery here.
All we can do is hazard some guesses instead.
The guesses of a Bihar bottled Bong are always hilariously wrong but self-revealing.
Myriad of differences
In the first place, the ideological hiatus between Nehru and Modi is total.
Because Modi isn't ideological. He is pragmatic.
Modi may not have any academic knowledge of Nehruvian India,
or he may have plenty. We don't care.
but as an RSS pracharak (ie, propagandist) from his young days, he has drunk the anti-Congress kool-aid, which regards the party as the key impediment in turning India into a Hindu rashtra along the lines of Islamic Pakistan.
That is certainly how Congress presented itself. Its own people drank that kool-aid. Manmohan promised that henceforth Muslims would have first dibs on the Nation's resources. Rahul refused to identify himself as Hindu till too late. Then he went over the top by describing himself as a Dattatrey gotra Brahmin- i.e. a casteist cunt.
And, of course, the lynchpin of the Congress was
Mahatma Gandhi who anointed
Pandit Nehru,
because he believed Nehru would give up on this Western ideas and become a Gandhian- i.e. one who accepted that India would always be a shithole.
for whom India’s commitment to secularism was simply non-negotiable.
Though it was Nehru who passed the law preventing Muslim refugees returning to reclaim their property. Hindi in Devanagari replaced Urdu. Muslims lost even caste based affirmative action. Sheikh Abdullah was put in jail when he wagged his tail. Meanwhile the Custodian of Evacuee property kept harassing wealthy Muslims.
So much so that he did not consider it necessary to incorporate this self-evident commitment into the constitution of India.
Though entitlement to citizenship on the basis of any religion save Islam was incorporated.
The overall thrust of the document would take care of it, Nehru was sure.
Nehru immediately amended the Constitution when some stupid Judge thought it meant something. The truth is, it was just empty verbiage of the sort that provincial lawyers like indulging in.
Second, there is a massive intellectual disparity between the two.
Modi is smart. Nehru was stupid. A pal of his, Patrick Blackett- a Brit with a Nobel Prize- confirms the judgment of Indian ICS officers- Nehru's intellect was facile but shallow. Smart people follow through. Stupid people babble nonsense and then take the path of least resistance.
It is my sense that Modi suffers from an inferiority complex.
Yeah right! A three term CM and two term PM thinks he is inferior to some Bengali with a Bihari education!
How else might one explain the drama surrounding Modi’s university education, or lack thereof?
Easily. The guy had no money. So he couldn't go to Collidge. The RSS took him in. He wrote a little book about his experiences working in the underground resistance to Indira's Emergency. The one perk Modi could get was the chance to do external degrees. Later he got a chance to visit the US. The story is that seeing the statue of Liberty made him want to build a bigger monument to Sardar Patel back home. He has certainly secured the affection of the NRI- except for Bengalis whom everybody else hates.
For a democratically chosen leader, and that too one with such a huge mandate, possession of a university degree should hardly matter. And yet, witness the drama that has been enacted in the public domain to manufacture a fake Delhi University MA degree – in “entire political science” no less – in his name. Not only did the farce needlessly focus attention on Modi’s education, but it also tarnished his image.
No. We don't give a shit. A fake degree in whatever shite this cunt professes is better than the genuine article.
Compared to Modi, Nehru was a genius.
Rahul has an M.Phil from Cambridge. He is a bigger genius than Rajiv or Indira- right?
He wrote five books, Letters from a Father to His Daughter (1929), Glimpses of World History (1934), An Autobiography (1936), The Discovery of India (1946) and Letters for a Nation: From Jawaharlal Nehru to His Chief Ministers 1947-1963 (available in four volumes, edited by G Parthasarathi). The erudition, intellectual suppleness, and catholicity of mind that they embody are the envy of even the most accomplished of academics.
Bengali academics whose alma mater is Bhagalpur- sure. However, being a successful CM and PM is what sensible people find enviable.
Nehru’s interactions with the intellectual luminaries of his age, figures like Rabindranath Tagore,
who warned the Hindus to unite against the aggression of the Christian and the Muslim
Albert Einstein,
who thought Indians an inferior people who smelled bad
Bertrand Russell,
a Pacifist who believed that war against inferior people- like Indians- was always justified
Romain Roland,
who decided that Stalin was the greatest man of the twentieth century
among many others, are also well documented.
Nehru was the son of a successful lawyer-politician who owned his own newspaper. Modi rose by his own efforts. Document that Ghosh Babu!
The third point of divergence can be ascribed to Modi’s insolence in contrast to Nehru’s sophistication.
Modi is not Brahmin or Kayastha. The fellow is being too insolent. Why take the job of Prime Minister? Why not show some basic sophistication and savoir faire by applying for a position as a chaprasee in the PMO?
Modi’s public speeches often taunt and ridicule those who ruled India before him.
So that they won't get to rule India after him.
In one go he reduces his predecessors to naught, as if nothing worthwhile happened during the past 70 years.
The RSS was worthwhile.
Curiously, this infantile dismissal even includes the Vajpayee years, although Modi is careful not to single him out by name.
Nobody will vote for a guy who pretends that Vajpayee and Murli Manohar weren't cretinous windbags.
Unlike Modi, Nehru had to deal with all kinds of political powerhouses, both within his party as well as in the Opposition.
It is Modi's fault that Rahul is a mooncalf.
His equanimity while doing so was par excellence,
But Ghosh Babu's English isn't.
and perhaps best demonstrated in his handling of the mercurial VK Krishna Menon.
A nutter who should have been confined in a padded cell, not elevated to the Cabinet. Nehru, however, wanted America to see that there were crazier nutjobs in India than himself. He shone by comparison. After the Chinese invasion, Nehru took over even the Defense portfolio.
Nehru's contribution was to create a Dictatorship with all power vested in the PMO and the Planning Commission. This may have been a good thing if the man himself hadn't been so wretchedly bad as a statesman.
Anyone who has read Jairam Ramesh’s biography of Menon
has wasted his time.
would appreciate Nehru’s patience and balanced outlook.
This is like saying 'anybody who knows of the crazy shit Rasputin got up to would appreciate Tzar Nicky's balanced outlook'. You don't get credit for shining by comparison to a nutter you yourself elevated.
One must also remember that his first cabinet contained figures with diametrically opposed politics.
But the Finance portfolio was in the safe hands of those without any politics whatsoever.
On the one hand was someone like the Hindu Mahasabha leader Syamaprasad Mukherjee, among the Hindu right’s founding figures, on the other, someone like the Scheduled Castes Federation leader BR Ambedkar, whose views on Hindu law reform were even more radical than Nehru’s.
Nehru wanted them inside the tent pissing out rather than outside the tent pissing in. Also, it was by no means certain that India would stick with Westminster style Parliamentary Democracy. The INC could have turned into a one party state. Thus letting it appear broad tent was sound strategy.
The fourth dissonance pertains to conflicting orientations in respect of science and rationality. Nehru took great pains to emphasise and promote a scientific temper.
Very true. He got Dhirendra Brahmachari to teach Indira Yoga with his dick. Nehruji was having very bad temper. Dick Yoga was helping his temper because that's how science works- right?
Today, under Modi, that term and what it represents are a matter of ridicule.
For elderly Bengali buddhijivis- maybe. The problem here is that 'scientific temper' means 'empiricism' and choosing 'Structural Causal Models' with predictive power. This cretin thinks it means repeating stupid lies and then laughing heartily.
Pride in past achievements is certainly natural, but to attribute every great scientific achievement to ancient Indians, meaning Hindus, be it plastic surgery, remote sensing, computer technology, or even pen-drives, is quite simply absurd.
Not if it placates- or appears to placate- a potential source of subversion or disaffection. Lots of things politicians say are absurd. But if what they do is better than any feasible rival, they stay in power.
All one has to do is travel abroad to discover how much laughter such claims elicit, barring of course amongst Modi’s NRI cheerleaders.
Fuck off. Nobody gives a shit about what some politician says while catching votes. British or Canadian Prime Ministers dress up in absurd Bollywood costumes to grab a few votes from immigrants. So what?
Liberalism vs illiberalism
The fifth difference is between Nehru’s liberalism and Modi’s illiberalism.
Liberalism is shit. The Indian Liberal Party died around 1932. Still, it did get a profitable deal for its members.
Since the question is subjective, its answer cannot be objective.
Sure it can. Objectively the answer is 'the question is stoooooopid. Fuck off.' Nehru was a Socialist. He was not a Liberal. Modi is a Nationalist. He is not a Liberal. Nehru opposed decriminalizing sodomy. Modi doesn't give a shit about the issue. Why? Modi is pragmatic. Nothing which matters is affected if some take it up the arse. Nehru, however, believed that Indians could never be homos. The Muslims must have spread that filthy habit. I mean, look at the Bhopal hockey team!
The evidence from films produced during the two eras is suggestive because
Nehru was a film-maker. Modi got his start as a playback singer.
films often reflect the social atmosphere better than other forms of media.
Except for Hindi Cinema produced by PWA nutters from Peshawar or Calcutta.
Having done some work on the films of the 1950s and 1960s,
he watched some old movies. Cool.
I can state that it would be unthinkable for the Nehruvian state to endorse a film like The Kashmir Files.
Though the Nehruvian state killed and expelled millions of Muslims. Nehru was PM because Congress was the muscular arm of a Hindu nation. Incidentally, Nehru always referred to Allahabad as Prayag. He wouldn't let one sister marry a Muslim though another sister married a Jain and a cousin married a Jewess. His daughter married a Parsi, but by Hindu rites. She fought a court case to establish her sons were Hindus.
Most riot situations, or factors that lead to mass exodus under duress, are full of gruesome stories. Fiction is a particularly powerful medium through which this pain is memorialized and processed, as the works of Saadat Hasan Manto, Khushwant Singh, Bhisham Sahni and many others have shown us.
But Indians preferred films with a bit of sex and violence and nice songs and dances. Khushwant Singh wasn't utterly humorless. But Manto and Sahni were as dire as any miserabilist Bengali.
Film-makers and historians too carry the burden of telling these stories.
They carry the burden of being full of shit.
But the one entity that should steadfastly maintain its distance from such activities is the state.
Because this cunt says so- right?
In the interests of societal harmony, it should instead rise above partisan politics,
So politicians shouldn't be politicians. They should watch old movies while holding hands with this freak.
and it should be especially careful not to promote the commercial interests of authors and filmmakers, no matter their ideological hue.
Also, it should convert to Islam and declare jihad to promote communal harmony.
For example, should the state spread stories about how the Bengali Hindus of Sylhet had to face majoritarian ethnoreligious ire twice during their lifetime?
Not Mamta's state. It should quietly wait till Muslims become the majority before escaping to Hindu India.
If the first was at the hands of Sylheti Muslims from whom they fled, then the second was in Shillong at the hands of the Khasi majority.
Whom we prefer to spineless Bengali blathershites. Let them fuck up their own Province. We want no lectures from those cretins.
Following the signing of the Assam Accord in 1985, the demands of the All Assam Students Union became the demands of the Khasi Students Union. Their now common demand was that all foreigners should leave. But there was a hierarchy of hatred: first came the Bengalis, then Nepalis (of Indian origin) and finally the Biharis. Soon the cosmopolitanism of Shillong was in tatters.
Calcutta was once very cosmopolitan. Then the Bengalis fucked up its economy. Shillong was never cosmopolitan. Had it been overrun by Bengalis, it would be just another shithole. The Khasis want civilizational advancement, not Bengali bigots running things.
History teaches us that politicians try to perpetuate their rule by hook or by crook.
History teaches us that Dynasties do so. Politicians try to implement policies. They resign if they feel the wrong policy has been chosen.
In moments of excess, such strategies can end up doing significant damage to the body politic.
Also significant reaming of the body politic's anus can occur. Ghosh Babu should kindly give it a rim job.
I fear we are at such a moment.
Then crouch down and get busy licking the body politic's anus, Ghosh Babu!
We are destroying the very idea of India upon which the entire fabric of the Indian state rests.
No. You may be having a stroke or you may be stroking yourself imagining you are giving body politic a nice rim job. No State rests on an idea. Only blathershites pretend otherwise.
That idea is underwritten in its constitutional imagination, the three central pillars of which are secularism, federalism and pluralism.
and telling Bengali buddhijivis to fuck the fuck off. The Indian constitution is unitary. It is secular because Hindus consider custom and consensus stronger sources of Law than scriptural injunction. It is not plural save with respect to certain tribal territories. But that is also true of Canada and the US.
Modi in history
If Modi wants posterity to remember him as a great Prime Minister,
he has got his wish. Resign after getting a third term. Don't wait till you become as senile as Nehru or Vajpayee or Morarji.
he cannot ignore this small piece of advice from this unknown Indian.
This cunt thinks his English is as good as Niradh Chaudhri's!
Let him note that Nehru was an assemblage of ideas.
No he wasn't. Nobody is. He was a man who should have retired at 70.
By attacking the man, Modi attacks that assemblage,
what fucking assemblage? Clamoring for a UN seat for Communist China and recognizing their claim to Tibet which inevitably meant they'd have a claim on Ladakh and Sikkim and Arunachal? That's a fucking assemblage of ideas- stupid ones- right enough.
and in doing so, he runs the risk of destroying what we are proud of as Indians.
We are proud of Gujarat. We are not proud of West Bengal.
Let Narendra Modi understand that in the history books it is he on whom chapters will be written, not the RSS. The latter may pompously celebrate their upcoming centenary and remain influential for another 100 years, yet no separate chapters will be devoted to them.
Fuck off! The RSS has its own literary eco-system. There will be plenty of such histories because RSS members tend to rise up educationally and commercially. So, there will be a market for books about what great-grand daddy got up to during Indira's vile Emergency.
They will figure only in the context of the Prime Ministers of India. The ball, therefore, is entirely in Modi’s court.
And will remain so in his third term. Modi has entered history. This buddhijivi may have got one or two degrees in that shite which enabled him to make a good enough living. I imagine he'd have been a pleasant enough colleague though a sycophant and a waste of space intellectually speaking. At least he wasn't constantly displaying his dick as, I fondly believe, is the wont of Dipesh Chakraborty. These are small mercies but only coz buddhijivis got tiny dicks. Still, if the body politic needs rim job, Ghosh Babu will rise to the occasion and do the needful. Mind it kindly. Aiyayo.
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