The New Yorker carries the following interview with a stupid Frenchie named Jaffacake or something of that sort.
Earlier this month, Rahul Gandhi, India’s main opposition leader, was convicted of defamation, for, several years ago, likening Narendra Modi, the country’s Prime Minister, to a thief.
No. He was convicted of criminal defamation for saying that all thieves belong to the Modi caste. He had been warned by the Supreme Court against 'collective denunciation' in 2016. He offered no apology and still maintains that the Court can't 'pressurize' him into apologizing.
Days after the verdict, Gandhi was disqualified from serving in the lower house of Parliament, which is controlled by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
The disqualification was automatic and commenced the moment judgment was passed. What was surprising was that Rahul's lawyers did not immediately file a review petition.
The trial took place in Modi’s home state of Gujarat;
also the home state of millions of people from the Modi caste.
the sentence—two years—is the exact length necessary to deem a member of Parliament unfit to serve.
It is also the maximum punishment under the law.
(Gandhi announced that he would appeal the sentence.)
He has not yet done so. Why?
Meanwhile, opposition parties have joined forces to speak out against the increasing number of non-B.J.P. politicians who have been targeted by courts or state agencies.
They aren't protesting about BJP politicians sent to jail. I wonder why.
It remains unclear whether the various opposition parties will unite ahead of next year’s elections, where Modi is expected to lead his party to a third straight victory.
It is clear they won't unite because they keep saying so. They will concentrate on trying to cannibalize each other's vote share.
Over the course of Modi’s premiership, which began in 2014, he has turned India into an increasingly illiberal democracy.
It was previously slavishly dynastic- not democratic at all. Rahul Gandhi is the great-grandson of the first Prime Minister who was himself the son of a President of Congress.
Vigilante attacks on religious minorities have increased markedly,
They peaked under Nehru.
the ruling party has taken steps to strip citizenship from Indian Muslims,
No. They Supreme Court took suo moto action to compile a Nationality Register and to open detention centers for illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. This happened when Congress was in power. What Modi did was bring in a law to assure non-Muslims fleeing Islamic persecution that they would get Indian citizenship. But this had already been done by Nehru.
and the historically repressed Muslim-majority state of Kashmir has faced even harsher crackdowns.
No. The harshest crackdowns were under Congress rule. The dynasty comes from Kashmir.
Still, Modi remains remarkably popular, with approval ratings above seventy per cent.
He is popular because he is perceived as tough on issues the Hindu majority holds dear.
The moves against Gandhi—the scion of India’s Congress Party,
Rahul is a scion of the Nehru/Gandhi dynasty. He may be called the owner of the Congress Party. But it is not his Mummy or Daddy or Granny.
which ruled the country for most of the post-independence era—were surprising in part because Gandhi doesn’t seem to pose a real threat to Modi politically.
Modi made no move against Rahul. Some other guy named Modi brought the defamation case. He won because as a member of the Modi caste, he had been criminally defamed under Section 499 of the Indian Penal Code. On the other hand, BJP legislators were incensed by anti-national statements made by Rahul. They are demanding that he apologize.
To talk about Gandhi’s conviction and disqualification, I recently spoke by phone with Christophe Jaffrelot, a senior research fellow at Sciences Po, a professor of Indian politics and sociology at King’s College, London, and the author of “Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy.”
So, this guy spoke to a guy who is making money by writing books about how Modi is Hitler. That's journalistic balance for you.
During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how Modi’s government has evolved in a more authoritarian direction, the central role that anti-Muslim politics has played in his success, and where opposition to the B.J.P. is likely to emerge.
Is the Gandhi conviction and disqualification just another step that the Modi government has taken to restrict political freedom in India? Or does it signal something new?
The thing has nothing to do with Modi. Any one can bring a defamation case. If you say 'all Iyers are corpulent cretins', I may not be able to sue you because I am fat and stupid. But other slim and lovely Iyers could sue you for defamation.
It is a restriction of a new kind. We have seen minor politicians affected by these kinds of moves at the state level, or at the provincial level.
Because major politicians don't go in for 'collective denunciation'.
For instance, Manish Sisodia, the right-hand man of the chief minister of New Delhi, was arrested last month.
For corruption. If the prosecution can prove he enriched himself, he will be sentenced to jail. Narasimha Rao, a former PM, was sentenced to jail.
That was clearly a big issue. But to attack Rahul Gandhi is a bigger issue, and you can say the difference is in kind, not in degree, because he is the leader of the opposition,
He isn't even the leader of his own Party, let alone the leader of the opposition.
and he is therefore the main contender for dislodging Modi from power.
Don't be silly. Rahul resigned as leader of Congress in 2019.
So if Modi attacks someone like him, it means that to replace Modi will be very difficult.
Very true. If Modi attacks Macron, Macron will fall. The question is why Modi doesn't attack Mamta- except he did attack her but she won by a landslide.
It means that we are in an authoritarian regime where the man in charge is supposed to rule forever.
To a stupid Frenchman, maybe. He probably thinks Biden ordered Trump's indictment. This means Biden is sure to win the next election. Then Biden will attack Trudeau and take over Canada.
In a recent piece, you expressed some hope that the B.J.P. might have gone too far. Why is that?
The BJP makes mistakes. Look at Himachal. They deserve to lose Karnataka because they took on a lot of very corrupt defectors.
Well, it’s one of the possibilities. It may be seen as an existential threat by state parties.
Fuck off! Is Naveen or Stalin or Mamta sweating? Even Tejashwi seems buoyant. Kharge looks set to bring Congress back to power in Karnataka. Who is the BJP candidate for Rajasthan? Vasundhara? Gehlot will win against her. It is only Pilot who worries him.
And they may realize that they need to close ranks.
Their common enemy is the Courts which don't understand that democracy means politicians should not be sent to jail even if they keep killing each other.
If the rules of the game are changing so quickly, so radically, they may not be in a position to retain power at the state level, where they are so well entrenched.
This simply isn't happening. CMs have more power now than under the dynasty.
They may do what we’ve seen in Turkey, in Israel, in Poland, in Hungary, in all these countries, where finally the opposition leaders realize that if they do not unite they’re done.
They are done for only if they don't have a better candidate for the top job. That's what is important. Suppose all the stupid people unite and nominate one of their own for the next Nobel prize in physics. Their guy still won't win. Some smart chap will get the medal.
Opposition parties still control many of India’s twenty-eight states, and you’re saying that Gandhi’s conviction could be a sign that the ruling party is going to go after them, too? And that the only way to hold on to what power they do have is to unite?
Exactly. Power in India lies largely at the state level. It’s a federal system.
No. There is no dual sovereignty.
Modi is probably the most popular leader in the world. His party has amassed incredible power to a degree not seen in India in many decades.
Not really. Congress was a Fascist party which could lock up and torture its opponents- as Indira Gandhi actually did in the mid-Seventies. But assassination tempers autocracy.
Yet, at the state level, especially in the south, you see regional parties keeping the B.J.P. out of power. How has this been possible?
They are better at governance. Tamil Nadu has been ruled by 'regional parties' since 1968.
He’s not as popular as he claims. The B.J.P. never got more than thirty-seven per cent of the vote nationally.
The best result since 1989 of any party.
They control half a dozen big states, and most of them are in the Hindi Heartland. [These are states in the northern and central parts of the country.]
The BJP is doing well in the north east.
If you look at the periphery, if you look at the states which are outside the Hindi Heartland—they do not control Tamil Nadu and they will never control Tamil Nadu.
If Jaffacake says so then BJP will be in power there (with regional partners) by the end of the decade. The man is a cretin.
They do not control Kerala and they will never control Kerala. Look at West Bengal
without Mamta, BJP could win
and Punjab,
BJP and Akalis could make a comeback if AAP falls on its face
and even Maharashtra, which is not a finished story.
Because the Marathas are courted by all political parties. They will always be masters in their own house.
There is a kind of exaggeration of the control they exert. And they exert control not because of the popularity of the B.J.P.; they exert control largely because Modi gets the B.J.P. elected every five years, which means that, after him, the B.J.P. may be in trouble. They have so much power because of their totalitarian modus vivendi, not because of their popularity.
A modus vivendi can't be totalitarian. The phrase means a pragmatic accommodation or method of co-existence. The plain fact is Modi & his Cabinet are good at their jobs. The BJP can screw up 'booth management' as they did in Himachal and there can be rampant corruption as there is in Karnataka. But, as a whole, BJP is more meritocratic than the dynastic or caste based parties.
I’m looking at Morning Consult’s global approval-rating tracker for world leaders. Modi is currently at seventy-six-per-cent approval. That is fifteen percentage points higher than any other world leader.
Because Modi is very good at his job. You can't say Biden is good at his job. You can only say the alternative was worse. Macron is shit at his job. But what is the alternative?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you go by the voting patterns of Indians, which is for me the real measure of popularity, Indians in more than half of the country’s states do not vote for the B.J.P. and for Modi when he is the candidate.
So, there is no real 'majoritarian' threat. India is deeply democratic. Sadly, Rahul is so useless that Congress can provide no credible rival for Modi.
In that case, how do you understand this dynamic, where Modi himself is personally popular but he can’t yet lead the B.J.P. to take control of a majority of states?
Because the BJP doesn't have a better CM candidate in most states. That's what matters.
There are very strong regional identities that are not represented by the B.J.P.
No. There are regions where the BJP presence is small.
The B.J.P. is seen as a North Indian, Hindi-speaking party. It’s also seen as an upper-caste party. So those who are not Hindus—in Kashmir, of course, and Sikh people in Punjab—do not vote for the B.J.P.
Secessionist sentiments have some purchase there
And those who are not Hindi speakers in Tamil Nadu,
where Stalin appears to be reviving secessionist rhetoric. But this may backfire. The BJP has a popular candidate. The question is whether the Anna DMK can revive itself.
West Bengal, and Kerala cannot share this ideology of the B.J.P.’s.
Without Mamta, the BJP would prevail. Kerala has too many Christians and Muslims but also committed Communists who can provide good governance.
You’re suggesting that Modi’s personal popularity is real, but it hasn’t completely transferred to support for the Party, which is why the Party could be in trouble after he’s gone?
Unless his successor is equally good. Who might that be? Yogi? But he will want to concentrate on UP. The fact is few successful CMs want to move to Delhi. Maybe a guy from a smaller state. Personally, I like Kiren Rijiju.
Exactly.
In your book, you say that, in 2014, after Modi’s election, India was an “ethnic democracy,”
as opposed to a country ruled by a nice Italian lady.
and that it adopted something that you call “competitive authoritarianism.”
another oxymoron like 'totalitarian modus vivendi'. If there is competition there is no authoritarianism. If we have a choice between Apple and Android, we can't say either is forcing us to submit.
Can you talk about what you think each of those two things are, and how India has changed during Modi’s nine years in power?
There are two sequences, or phases. “Ethnic democracy”
means a nation which choses its leaders through general elections. That's what India became in 1947.
is a formulation that comes from Israel.
Judaism is a religion. It is not an ethnicity. Some Israelis spoke Yiddish- a Teutonic language. Others, the Mizrachi, spoke Arabic. Yet others spoke Amharic or Malayalam.
It was coined for understanding that kind of democracy. In India, we have a democracy in the sense that, after 2014, you still had elections, you still had a somewhat independent judiciary, at least till 2017 or 2018, and you still had a rather independent press.
All of these things still exist. Why pretend otherwise? Is it so as to sell books about how Modi is Hitler?
It has changed a lot. But it was an ethnic democracy, in the sense that the minorities—the non-Hindus, the Muslims, but also the Christians—were second-class citizens in their own country.
As were all Hindus- like Varun Gandhi- whose mummy wasn't a nice Italian lady named Sonia.
And they were second-class citizens mostly because of the support of vigilante groups by the government. Vigilantism is a very important dimension of national-populist regimes. You have groups of activists making the lives of minorities very difficult.
Especially the Hindu minority in the Vale of Kashmir.
For instance, in India, Muslims have been attacked because they were accused of taking cows to slaughterhouses.
And Christians had their hands chopped off because they were accused of blasphemy against Islam.
You had many, many cases of lynching.
Less than a hundred. Sadly, where Muslims are the minority, their attempts to get revenge tend to backfire. But much worse happened under Nehru. Delhi's Muslim population fell from one third to just five percent when he took power.
Muslims were also prevented from talking to Hindu girls.
They are prevented to talking to any girls- by the Taliban.
The vigilante groups called that “love jihad.” Muslims were also prevented from purchasing flats in Hindu-dominated neighborhoods.
South Indians like myself don't understand this. But then our history has been rather different. Tambrams were delighted to sell homes in the Agraharam to Muslims. In Gujarat, the thing would be unthinkable. I suppose we are less prejudiced or else we are simply fonder of money.
There was a real deterioration of life for Muslims. De facto, you saw them becoming second-class citizens.
Indeed. In the North, there was genuine hatred which is why partition occurred and both sides engaged in ethnic cleansing. Nothing of the sort happened in T.N or Kerala. Hyderabad may have been different. Coastal Karnataka too.
After 2019, we saw something new. We saw things changing in the laws. A very important law, for instance, was the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. It was passed in order to make religion the criterion for accessing Indian nationality.
this happened in 1948 when Muslim refugees who had crossed the border in terror were denied re-entry and stripped of citizenship.
Only non-Muslim refugees from Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Pakistan were eligible for citizenship.
Since 1948. This is because Muslims are not persecuted in Muslim countries. As for those branded 'apostates', Indian Muslims will kill them so they are not safe in India as Dr. Taslima Nasrin discovered. I believe some Ahmadiyas have come to India but they keep very quiet about this.
Also, new laws were passed to make interreligious marriages more difficult.
Come to think of it, Communists in Kerala started the 'Love jihad' campaign.
There was also the revocation of Article 370, which had granted some autonomy for Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state.
A 2016 Supreme Court judgment said J&K had no shred of sovereignty. Since it was under President's Rule, it could be downgraded to Union Territory status so that the Center took over direction of the Police.
You’re very right. In fact, these laws were all passed at the same time, after the 2019 election. These elections marked a kind of transformation of a de-facto ethnic democracy
it became de jure in August 1947
into a kind of de-jure ethnic democracy.
It became de facto when Congress ministries took power in 1937.
But they also marked a shift toward authoritarianism.
This stupid Frenchman doesn't understand what authoritarianism means. It can't exist if there is an independent Judiciary and a Supreme Court which is self-appointing and which claims a monopoly of deciding what is or isn't part of the 'basic structure' of the Constitution. It is because of the 2013 Lily Thomas judgment that Rahul has been disqualified.
And this authoritarianism took different forms.
Authoritarianism can only take one form. Paranoid ideation, however, can see authoritarianism even in a pussy cat.
First, we saw an attack on the judiciary. [The B.J.P.] tried to change the procedure for appointing judges. They failed.
So there is no fucking authoritarianism or rather the Supreme Court is the ultimate authority deciding all questions. This suits the BJP. After all, it is the Bench which gave them the Ram Temple and the Nationality Register and so forth.
In fact, they failed the way that Benjamin Netanyahu is failing—
fuck off! Do you see the Indian Embassy in France closed down because half the workers there are on strike protesting the action of the PM? That's what's happened to the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi.
not so much because of popular demonstrations but because the judges themselves, the Supreme Court, said, no, we don’t want to change the way people are appointed. But, in retaliation, the Modi government refused to appoint the judges that the judiciary itself had selected for the job.
The Executive can stop funding the judiciary. Indeed, some decisions of the Bench- e.g. on water sharing- are simply ignored. But, the fact is, Indian administrations love kicking the can down the road into the courts. Justice delayed, is injustice denied. Look at poor Sidhu. He and his pal beat an elderly man to death in 1988. The Court finally sentenced him to one year in jail but he is getting out after serving ten months. Meanwhile the true culprit- a 65 year old man- has been enjoying his afterlife for the past 25 years! You call this justice? Would Gywneth Paltrow have had to spend ten months in jail if she had beaten in the skull of an elderly optician in America? Truly, I say, India has totally betrayed the democratic ideals of its founders- Aurangazeb and Tipu Sultan.
And therefore in 2017, 2018, and 2019, you had an amazing number of vacancies.
One million vacancies? Two million? That would be amazing.
And now the judiciary was on the defensive. They finally internalized this, and they stopped nominating judges that they knew the government would not accept.
Which is why Bozo the Clown was kept off the bench. Sad.
They also started to become very complacent.
Frenchie does not know what the word 'complacent' means. He thinks it means the same thing as 'compliant'.
So either they validated any law that the government was passing or they refused to take a stand.
They also took to sucking off passersby on the off chance that this would please Modi.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act is illegal,
says a stupid Frenchman who doesn't know the law. The plain fact is, non-Muslims face persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. They don't in England. If Rishi Sunak turns up begging for Indian citizenship we will have to be very firm with him. He must return to the UK and fight with the new leader of the SNP.
but the judges are sitting on it and don’t want to give any verdict.
COVID froze proceedings which have begun again. But the Bench may push back the cut-off date because its original motivation was to implement the 1985 accord. Who knows which way Chandrachud will jump?
Abolition of Article 370 was illegal, too.
It is legal till the Bench says otherwise. This guy just doesn't get how Constitutional law works.
There are a great number of laws that are in contradiction to the constitution and which the judges should invalidate. That’s one symptom of authoritarianism.
No it isn't. It is a symptom of due process activism on the part of the Bench. But that is a two edged sword.
There is another very interesting symptom, which is the way that the media has been treated.
Modi won't give press conferences. Media felt terribly slighted. It cried and cried.
The media in India used to be vibrant, like the judiciary.
No. It was shit then and it is shit now.
That’s over. [The B.J.P.] used the leverage they had on the owners.
It has none in Chennai or Calcutta or, till recently, Mumbai.
The people who own the media in India are all businessmen.
Whereas in America, the media is owned by hobos.
And these businessmen have other businesses. They need the support of the government for the other businesses, and if the government is not happy with some of the journalists they ask the businessmen to ease out the journalists.
But Mamta's goons will kick your fucking head in if you praise Modi! It is more important to stay alive than to get government contracts.
Have we seen this kind of transition into competitive authoritarianism in other countries? What is normally the next step?
The creation of a dynasty- which is what Mrs. Gandhi did. She made the judiciary and the media and everybody else crawl. Then she was killed.
There are different scenarios. You have the resilience scenario, where some opposition leader can shift the discourse and stage a comeback, like Lula did.
Once out of jail- sure.
This happens because he appears as a man of the people and he replaces the emphasis on ethnic nationalism, or conservatism, with a focus on socioeconomic issues with robust institutions.
and lots and lots of corruption.
And in Brazil the judiciary was, in fact, remarkably robust.
It was mad. But then half of all Brazilian judges have faced death threats. None in India have done so in recent years.
The other scenario we see is the Israeli scenario, where you have people in the streets. The democratic culture is sufficiently robust to force Netanyahu to postpone his agenda. These are the two positive scenarios.
They are shitty scenarios. Thankfully, India is in a much better position.
But in many places you have the negative scenario. Look at Hungary or Poland.
Communist dictatorships till quite recently. The Brits introduced India to democracy by gradual steps starting a hundred years ago.
They get away with it. And, in India, I’m afraid this scenario is more likely, because you don’t have the civil society that Israel has, you don’t have the judiciary and the leaders that Brazil has.
India has a better judiciary and better leaders than Brazil- which was a dictatorship not so long ago. Israel is a special case. Still, proportional representation is never a good idea.
So we may be stuck with Modi till he leaves the scene.
Only if nobody better comes along
And the big question is: After Modi, what will happen?
If Modi drops dead, Amit Shah takes over. Can he win elections? Maybe.
Modi does seem to be more popular across India than Netanyahu, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have been in their respective countries. Even if the B.J.P. hasn’t instituted itself in all the states in India, it does seem that the broader Hindu-nationalist project is popular. Do you think that’s wrong?
In the sub-continent, Religion has high Income elasticity. Hindu-nationalism will increase. They are 80 percent of the population. The Muslims will remain disaffected but will rule the roost in some districts. Maybe the CPM can become the 'secular' opposition with Congress as a junior partner. This depends on whether Vijayan can really become the Deng Xiaoping of India.
No, I think you’re right. And I think it has a lot to do with the magnitude of anti-Muslim prejudice. It is so strong. People find refuge in the B.J.P. against Muslims, and against Pakistan. It has a lot to do with the public sphere. They have really propagated such diabolical images of Muslims that now it’s deeply rooted in the psyche of the society. So, for that reason, you can say, yeah, the popular support remains strong.
France has banned the hijab and was an enthusiastic participant in the war of revenge which killed 1.3 million Muslims. Will La Pen win next time round? Perhaps. Look at Meloni in Italy.
I’ve been struck by this as well. I don’t want to say that Brazil or the United States or any of these places don’t have bigotry that shapes our politics. But the scale of anti-Muslim prejudice in India and how it has openly infected so many areas of Indian public life, especially in the past decade, is astonishing and depressing. I’m curious why you think that is, or how it’s happened.
The answer is that 'secular' parties gave the Muslim vote a high 'Shapley value'. Sadly, this meant criminal Muslims entered legislatures. This triggered Hindu consolidation which gave them lower Shapley value than even their proportion of the population. Ahmed Patel understood this. He was the last Muslim MP Gujarat sent to the Lok Sabha. Now there is just one Muslim MLA in Gujarat. Why? Blame 'Raees' aka Abdul Latif and other such crooks and sponsors of terrorism. Where there are good Muslim candidates, Hindus will vote for them. Put up gangsters and you lose votes.
I would say there is a push factor and there is a pull factor. The Islamophobia was fostered by not only Partition but by the way Pakistan supported jihadi groups in the two-thousands. That was horrendous. I’m sure you remember 2008, the attack on Bombay, and so many other attacks.
That didn't stop UPA winning in 2009.
That’s clearly a factor in the mobilization against Muslims, who are seen as a fifth column of Pakistan articulating a jihadi discourse. But there is also a pull factor, in the sense that we’ve seen a Hinduization of society.
Because Religion has high income elasticity of demand in low income economies transitioning to middle income status. This French fool is as ignorant as shit.
You are against Muslims on the one hand,
But not to the extent of killing 1.3 million innocent Muslims in a war of revenge
and you’re for Hinduism on the other hand. These two factors are combined. But why has Hinduism become such an appealing identity?
It's actually quite a nice religion.
That, I think, is something you can only understand if you look at the modernization of Indian society after 1991, when economic liberalization resulted in more growth, urbanization, and consumerism. These were the ingredients of a new middle class, which was to become the core electorate of the B.J.P. This group became affluent, but also rootless.
No. It remained rooted. It's just that it could afford more religion. People would spend money going to different Teerths not just their own ancestral shrine. The Rath Yatra was about having nice Temples you could visit. That's the whole story not some Durkheimian shite.
They searched for an identity and found it in Hindu nationalism,
because previously they were too poor to have a personal identity or even a name.
which endowed them with some cultural anchor points. This upper-caste middle class turned to new, modern, English-speaking gurus,
Jeddu Krishnamurthy was English speaking. But, before him, there was Vivekananda. This Frenchie is utterly ignorant. The fact is the first stirrings of Indian Nationalism owed much to Hindu sanyassis as well as reformist sects like the Arya Samaj.
and sectarian movements in Gujarat and elsewhere. It started to follow the yoga classes of saffron-clad masters on television. The B.J.P. has been very good at tapping that source of legitimacy by co-opting these gurus.
The Yogis gave the impetus to the Anushilan committees from which the Seva Dal and the RSS were born. The RSS created the Jan Sangh as an alternative to the Mahasabha. The BJP is its direct descendant.
More generally, the Ayodhya movement, the movement for the building of the temple in Ayodhya, has enabled the B.J.P. to capitalize on this appetite for Hinduism and pride in a Hindu identity.
The Mahasabha started the fashion for Yatras in the early Eighties. Advani's genius was to start up a Rath Yatra where every village could contribute bricks for the new temple. Murli Manohar's Ekta Yatra, from Kanyakumari to Kashmir carried that momentum forward. That was over thirty years before Rahul's 'Bharat Jodo' stunt.
Ayodhya was a place where a mosque was destroyed in 1992 by a mob.
Muslims had not been allowed to worship there since 1948. Hindu worship, once a year, was performed.
And now there’s been a contested case about building a Hindu temple there, which the ruling party has been pushing.
That case is over. The Hindus won.
Yeah, and finally they won, because, in 2020, the Supreme Court of India said, yeah, go ahead, you can lay the first stone. Modi acts as though he were a priest, as if he were the great priestly head of India. You have a kind of theocracy in the making here, right? It explains a very important part of his popularity.
Only if you are a French nutter who knows shit about India. Hindus know the difference between a jajman and a pujari. Modi was the chief guest. He wasn't the priest. Modi, unlike Rahul, isn't a Brahmin nor has he qualified as a Shastri.
I suppose Frenchy thinks Macron is the Pope if he goes into a Church to receive Holy Communion.
I want to return to the opposition. Rahul Gandhi is essentially the leader of the Congress Party.
He owns it but does not lead it because he is too stupid or lazy.
He didn’t do well in elections in 2014 and 2019.
He resigned as President after the 2019 fiasco.
He is the son, grandson, and great-grandson of Indian Prime Ministers, and he was seen as a bit of a political failure. He recently embarked on this kind of tour where he travelled around the country and seemed to get the best press, or at least the best English-language press, that he has had in a very long time. But do you think that he or the Congress Party have shown any signs of being able to be more politically effective?
Kharge will win Karnataka- unless Rahul intervenes. But, at 80, it will be his last hurrah. Maybe some one smart will take over. Who can say?
Moreover, do you think that India’s electoral system will allow for all the opposition parties to unite in a fruitful way?
India's electoral system makes this easy. Just have a pre-poll pact.
Congress has a leader now.
Not really. Kharge understands Karnataka but that's all.
It had a program already—the 2019 Congress Party election manifesto was absolutely superb.
No. The 'deliverables' weren't targeted the way its poll promises in Karnataka have been.
The big question is the Congress electoral machine. This Bharat Jodo Yatra, this march of Rahul’s, was intended to activate the new machine, the new cadre. That was really one of his objectives: to get in touch with local support. What we don’t know is whether it was effective.
We know it was useless- just like all the other grass-roots initiatives of the Clown Prince. But if Kharge wins big in Karnataka, other State units will copy his playbook. The problem is Rahul. He might suddenly denounce Veerashaivas in the belief that they have something to do with Veer Savarkar.
We’ll know soon, because there will be elections in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan. This is a very important election year at the state level, preparing for 2024. For me, this is a question mark.
Because you are shit at your job. Karnataka should go to Congress. Rajasthan- assuming Vasundhara is the BJP pick- stays with Gehlot (provided Rahul doesn't piss off Pilot)- MP should stay with the BJP assuming Kejriwal acts as a spoiler. But, he may not. Suppose Kharge wins big in Karnataka. He could cut a deal with Kejriwal. After all, sooner or later, AAP needs to show it can appeal to rural Hindus.
The Congress Party can improve at the national level if it improves at the state level, and we’ll know soon whether it is in a position to do that or not.
Sadly, there is no guarantee of this. Modi could win big in 2024 if Kharge continues to project Rahul as his only possible successor.
The second question, of course, is a difficult one, because, on the one hand, all these state parties realize that if they don’t fight the B.J.P. it will swallow them or take away their voters.
Only if they are corrupt and put up criminals.
The risk is real. And the B.J.P. is very good at co-opting opponents.
The problem is not opponents but factions within your own party. BJP has the advantage because it can buy off disgruntled leaders with choice sinecures at the Center.
Modi has done it in Gujarat for years. He has attracted so many Congress leaders to the B.J.P.
He caused many BJP stalwarts to go to Congress or strike out on their own. Indeed, it was Sonia who helped him stay CM when his own party despaired of him.
He can continue to do it. And that makes the opponents very weak. That’s one problem.
Not really. The party cadre doesn't like having to accommodate defectors- more particularly because they are corrupt and soon defect again.
The question is: Will these state parties rally around Congress?
They can have pre-poll pacts. But Congress has to take a smaller share to stay in the game.
Here we have a problem. Who can be Prime Minister? Who can be the opposition’s head? I don’t think that Rahul will try to be the opposition’s Prime-Minister-in-waiting. He can be a great mobilizer. He can be what his mother was for ten years.
No. Sonia was the Regent for a young man not reliably known to be utterly shit. Congress can't put forward any alternative PM candidate because of the risk that the fellow will try to become independent- like Rao or even Manmohan.
Sonia Gandhi was the person who kept the ruling coalition together.
It was Ahmed Patel. Then he died. Sad.
But there was a Prime Minister: Manmohan Singh. The big problem today is: Who can be the Manmohan Singh of the opposition?
Nobody. Manmohan had the personality of a dead mouse. That's why Sonia trusted him. But even he started to wag his tail.
Who can be the Prime Minister whom opposition parties consider unthreatening in their own states? Until they’ve found this person, there’ll be a missing link. The glue for the opposition parties will not be so easy to find.
This is foolish. The glue was 'secularism'. But Nitish is reviving the Janata claim to represent it while Vijayan's CPM may be even better placed to do so (Vijayan's son-in-law is Muslim). Rahul went to too many temples and came out as a janeodhari Brahmin or Lingayat or some other such ultra High Caste personage. But Hindutva Lite won't work while attacking freedom fighters like Veer Savarkar is poison in Maharashtra. Still, anti-incumbency because of corruption is a hardy perennial- at least in State elections.
Now, there is one last possibility, and this is, well, people may try to vote for change. They may just have one slogan: We want change. We have no leader. We don’t have any Prime-Minister-in-waiting. But we want change, and if we ally only for change, it can work simply because it’s a first-past-the-post system. So if there is no competition between opposition parties, that in itself can make a huge difference.
Jaffacake truly has no clue about India. Older peeps like me remember the fate of Morarji and VP Singh's administrations. No competition before an elections means intense factionalism after it. That's what really entrenches a particular political party- not its record in office, but the rapid implosion of any coalition which displaces it.
Still, the New Yorker has done its job- viz. to shit on India because it doesn't hate America as much as other countries in the region. Give the Dems another term and that will change.
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