Though N.Ram belongs to the Communist party which rules Kerala, he is a wealthy newspaper publisher from the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu which is ruled by Stalin. Ram's Brahminical dynasty is linked by marriage to the ruling family of Tamil Nadu which is very anti-Brahmin. Since Modi is an enemy of Stalin, it is fortunate that Ram too loathes the fellow.
Ram writes in 'Prospect magazine' of
The making of Modi
What made Modi Prime Minister was his great success as Chief Minister of Gujarat for a dozen years. He is a good communicator and organizer. But the reason he wins such big majorities is because Rahul is useless. The Opposition needs to find an electable alternative to Modi.
To understand what’s in store for India,
whereas to understand what's in store for Tamil Nadu we have to look at Sri Lanka. A nepotistic dynasty wrecked its economy. That's what Stalin and his son will do to N.Ram's state.
we have to look at the ideology and politics that shaped its prime minister: Hindutva authoritarianism
Stalin's ideology is simply hatred of Brahmins- unless they happen to be called Rahul Gandhi. The DMK is a gangster outfit. Stalin's son openly says that Brahmins must be exterminated and 'Sanatan Dharma'- i.e. orthodox Hinduism must be driven out. This has created an opening for Modi. His party may get double digits of the popular vote. That's what scares N.Ram. He is showing his loyalty to his pals who are in power in Kerala and Karnataka and his own State.
Looking ahead to a year-and-a-bit from now, I can see in my mind’s eye a spectacle worthy of this age of strongmen: Donald Trump and Narendra Modi, each newly re-elected, are locked in a bear hug.
Modi will hug whoever is the US President. No doubt, Ram thinks Biden is very weak.
They are taking part in a festival of mutual admiration at the world’s largest cricket ground, which was named after the Indian premier in his home state of Gujarat.
If Trump is elected, India won't be one of his first ports of call. Biden, who does believe in 'Quad' and an Indo-Pacific strategy may turn up. India would prefer Biden over Trump because the latter is likely to think Quad is a waste of money.
The crowd of 125,000 people, bussed-in for the occasion, send up an almighty roar to the accompaniment of fireworks imported from China.
N. Ram is a great booster of China.
In reports about the event, the media from both countries will recall “Namaste Trump”, Modi’s extravagant welcome for Trump at that same stadium in February 2020,
which is why no future American President will be hosted there. India is a big country.
a month after the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 outbreak as a “public health emergency of international concern” and barely a month before the pandemic, which would directly and indirectly claim an estimated five million lives in India, was officially declared.
It wasn't till after Trump left that there were signs of any large outbreak. N.Ram's suggestio falsi is that Modi acted irresponsibly. If so, his pals in Kerala, where the first case was reported at the end of January, were even more irresponsible.
Theoretically, of course, the scene I imagine may not come to pass.
It won't. If Trump is re-elected Modi will want to take him somewhere he hasn't seen before.
Something might happen between now and the end of India’s marathon parliamentary election—which starts on 19th April and during which hundreds of millions of people in different parts of the country will vote—to upset these gloomy prognostications.
They are only gloomy to Ram because his pals haven't managed to find a Prime Ministerial candidate. Modi has been given, once again, a walk over.
Or indeed, something may come to pass before the US presidential election on 5th November. But going by current indicators, the odds on either upset happening are long—extremely long for Modi, perhaps somewhat shorter for Trump. That’s not good news for the world’s “largest” and “oldest” democracies.
It isn't good news for a guy whose newspaper is filled with stupid lies.
For while Modi and Trump have strikingly different backgrounds and styles, they have in common an uncanny ability to work crowds up into a frenzy;
Stalin does so just as his father did. Ram may not know this. He is very wealthy. He can see Stalin in his own drawing-room. He doesn't have to attend public rallies.
a taste for the grandiose and the talent and wherewithal to enact folies de grandeur on a scale rarely seen before.
I suppose Ram means that Modi's rallies are well planned and entertaining. But so are Stalin's.
Most importantly, they share an authoritarian disdain for their constitutions and the values,
guys named Stalin tend to be very sweet and nice- thinks nobody at all.
spirit and even the letter of these foundational charters.
Nonsense! Modi obeys the law. 28 out of the 33 ministers in Stalin's Tamil Nadu have criminal cases against them. That is the highest proportion in India. Stalin himself has 20 criminal cases against him.
According to India scholars Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil,
who have been consistently anti-Modi for decades now
India’s first dictatorship—the Emergency imposed in June 1975 by then prime minister Indira Gandhi and brought to an end 21 months later through a decisive electoral defeat for her party—was a complex phenomenon that was “neither a parenthesis, nor so much as a turning point, but a concentrate of a style of rule, an élan alive today,” which involves, among other things, “a dialectical relationship between populism and authoritarianism.”
Gobbledygook. Indira was determine to make her son her heir. She succeeded because the Opposition fell apart on the dual-membership issue. Since then it is the RSS backed BJP which has become the one national party. N. Ram may not like it. Stalin may not like it. But so long as Rahul is Modi's only rival, Modi will win.
There are echoes of that phenomenon in Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime has taken the path of incremental authoritarianism, softening up and, wherever possible, suborning constitutional and democratic institutions and undermining India’s already stressed secular foundations.
Secularism means Brahmins should not be persecuted because of their religion. N.Ram might tell Stalin that.
Though these actions have been extensively reported, they are worth repeating:
Telling lies is not reportage. Where is the evidence?
The government has brought executive power to bear on the independence of two constitutionally empowered institutions, the election commission and the Supreme Court, which in the assessment of some critical lawyers has been turned largely into an “executive court”
Where is the proof? Anyone can allege anything. I may say that N.Ram is illegally trying to sodomize Stalin by putting pressure on his buttocks. But I can't substantiate this allegation.
It has conducted targeted assaults on freedom of expression, media freedom, media independence and other fundamental rights.
Only in the sense that N.Ram has sodomized Stalin.
It has used anti-terror, sedition and other draconian laws to incarcerate journalists,
a terrorist who says he is a journalist can still be tried as a terrorist.
students,
students who kill people are murderers. They can be arrested.
human rights defenders, civil society activists and troublesome critics of the government—
who break the law may still get sent to jail.
often without bail or trial for prolonged periods. Since 2014, India has sunk to the rank of 161 among 180 countries and territories in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index;
But that index had sunk to the level of giving Stalin a reach-around while N.Ram pounded his ass.
It has almost certainly conducted illegal surveillance against a large number of journalists, politicians, civil society activists and other selected targets by deploying NSO Group’s military-grade spyware, Pegasus.
In which case why not bring a court case? Oh. You have no evidence just as I have no evidence that you are illegally sodomizing Chief Minister Stalin.
The Supreme Court had the matter investigated by an expert committee but has not yet made the findings public or come to a clear conclusion.
Sadly, the Bench requires evidence. Ram's word isn't good enough.
It has made a concerted effort to police and censor the internet, social media, streaming platforms such as Netflix and digital news providers through legislation including the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023.
This followed the Bench's ruling in Puttaswamy. Perhaps Ram thinks Justice Srikrishna played an invidious role. If so, why not say so.
This act, in the words of Subhashis Banerjee, a professor of computer science at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, “facilitates data collection and processing by the government and private entities rather than… data protection”
This is because certain sorts of data collection are lawful. Banerjee has been saying for a long time that the problem is enforcement. The law is drafted on the basis of legal concepts- e.g. right to privacy- rather than an understanding of the architectural requirements of authorisation, audit and access control in real-time. The problem here is that architectures can change very quickly. Moreover, the fact that our Government's hands are tied doesn't meant that other Governments or foreign enterprises can't gather that fruit.
It has amended the citizenship law to make Muslim (as distinct from non-Muslim) migrants from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan ineligible for citizenship,
Nope. It has amended the law to reaffirm Nehru's commitment in 1948 to give refuge to those fleeing Islamic persecution, be they Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh or Christian. Muslim migrants are not ineligible. They can apply for citizenship on the basis of other criteria- e.g. economic, cultural, family ties etc. It is obvious that Muslims, as Muslims, face no persecution from Islamic regimes. It may be argued that Ahmadiyas should be eligible but Indian Muslims will protest. If they wouldn't let Taslima Nasrin settle in India peacefully, what will they not do to those they term apostates?
thus introducing religion as a criterion for citizenship for the first time in the history of independent India.
Nonsense! Muslims who had fled across the border weren't allowed back. Many were harassed and driven out by the Custodian of Evacuee property. Non-Muslims- like Advani, Manmohan etc became Indian citizens even if their ancestral homes were in Pakistan. Later, when the Taliban came to power, India received Sikhs and Hindus from there. It also did take in Afghan Muslims some of whom have taken Indian citizenship so as to be able to continue to do international business. But most prefer to be stateless and remain in the queue for resettlement somewhere nice and ruled by White peeps.
Viewed along with the National Population Register and National Register of Citizens—two bureaucratic exercises of unprecedented scale and potential menace, which significant sections of India’s more than 200m Muslims see as being directed against them, and which are likely to cause hardship and harassment to the poor and dispossessed—the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 poses a direct challenge to India’s democratic and secular polity and to political stability as well;
Ram is cool with non-Muslim refugees being denied citizenship. Why can't they just fuck off back where they came from? Why deprive good people the chance to gain merit by slitting the throats of kaffirs?
The government has deployed brutal force to suppress democratic protests, notably demonstrations in December 2019 against those changes in the citizenship law that discriminate against Muslims,
only Muslims who entered the country illegally. The Bench opened detention centers for them in Assam. But few wanted to move to them.
and through 2020 and 2021 demanded the repeal of three laws seen as favouring corporate India at the expense of farmers;
they were seen as harmful to the arhatiya middle-men in Punjab and neighboring states.
It has systematically misused agencies of the state responsible for countering crime, corruption, income tax violations and money laundering in order to go after and arrest political opponents, including ministers, chief ministers and legislators;
Ram didn't protest when this happened under Manmohan nor when Stalin or Mamta or Vijayan misuse their state agencies. The problem here is that 'Agencies' don't need to be 'misused'. They are eager to be of service because the perception that they are close to the powers that be increases their own power and ability to extract bribes.
By abrogating, without discussion in parliament, Article 370 of the constitution, which granted a special autonomous status to Jammu and Kashmir,
it was the Bench, in 2016, which said J&K had no shred of sovereignty
and by downgrading the state to the status of a union territory, the Modi government has dealt a serious blow to the concept of Indian federalism.
There is no such concept. America has dual sovereignty. India does not. It is unitary.
Finally, it has made use of governors who are openly partisan, in an attempt to undermine elected state governments run by opposition parties, thus embittering relations between the states and the national government in several cases.
Again, this is nothing new. The Governors would say that they are trying to combat the gangsterism and corruption of State governments.
The list is not exhaustive, but is sufficient to make my point.
It is a bunch of lies or unsupported allegations.
Comparisons between strongmen (or to be more precise, authoritarian leaders) who rise to dominance in different countries with different histories, socio-economic conditions and political cultures are usually superficial.
Not if made by smart people. Hitler and Mussolini were in fact comparable as were Stalin and Mao.
“Men make their own history,” Karl Marx wrote famously in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, “but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”
Marx was wrong. Napoleon made his own history. So did his nephew. Both lost battles and ceased to be Emperors. Then the same thing happened to the other European Emperors.
And thus it is in the case of India’s prime minister.
Nope. The BJP gave Modi the job of CM of Gujarat. He did a great job there and kept getting re-elected. Then the BJP put him up for the job of PM of India. He did a great job and will be re-elected. Modi made his history by being good at his job. N.Ram inherited his position.
The personality cult of Modi—the prominent posters and cutouts, the naming of several national projects and centrally funded welfare schemes after him, the relentless projection of him by the BJP and a substantial part of mainstream media as the Redeemer—might suggest otherwise, but India’s prime minister is not his own man.
He is a member of the BJP. Similarly, Biden isn't his own man. He is a member of the Democratic party. If Trump wins it will be because of some split within Biden's party.
Simply put, Modi is a votary, a lifelong adherent, of the Hindu-supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Whereas Ram is a card carrying Communist- though he inherited billions.
If we are to have the measure of the man, the political leader—and the India he seeks to shape—it is imperative that we understand that bond.
Just as it is imperative to understand that Stalin is a votary, a lifelong adherent, of the viciously anti-Brahmin DMK. Ram, being very wealthy and disliking his ancestral religion, is happy with Stalin.
Born in a humble family that lived in straitened circumstances in an obscure small town in Gujarat, indifferently educated, and married, apparently against his wishes, at the age of 18, Modi forsook his wife and family and, after wandering about for three years in search of his inner self and his destiny, decided to make the RSS his permanent home.
Modi obeyed the Mahatma's injunction to remain celibate so as to better serve the nation. Now it appears Rahul too may remain a 'brahmachari'.
In 1972, the 22-year-old became a pracharak, a fulltime missionary who spreads the RSS gospel.
He has been very successful. Ram hasn't. But Ram has great inherited wealth.
The semi-secret organisation’s
it isn't secret at all. True, during the Emergency, many of its members had to go underground. But Stalin was tortured by Indira's goons. Maybe that is why he calls Rahul 'Sir'.
daily activities are centred on the shakha (a Sanskrit word denoting a branch or, in this case, a cell), where swayamsevaks, lay volunteers sometimes dressed in khaki shorts, meet with clock-like precision through the year for rigorous training and indoctrination in the mores of “Hindu dharma”, “community service”, “character building” and the Hindu-supremacist project of national reconstruction, as interpreted and ordained by the RSS.
Commies were against the RSS. Indeed, in Kerala, they keep killing its members. Sadly, Communist economics didn't work. Maybe Chairman Xi can figure out a way to do without freedom and free markets. But Xi can have millions of his own people killed. Modi can't.
After working doggedly within the RSS for 15 years, Modi got his break in politics when he was appointed general secretary of the BJP in Gujarat.
He didn't do well and so was kicked up stairs to Delhi.
He was unexpectedly promoted to the post of chief minister in October 2001, and four months later the horrors of the Gujarat pogrom unfolded on his watch: following an attack by a Muslim mob on the Sabarmathi Express train that resulted in the death of 59 Hindu pilgrims, frenzied Hindu mobs were left unchecked to murder, rape, torture, loot, pillage and “teach Muslims a lesson”.
Muslims fought back but the majority won.
The official death toll reported in parliament was 1,044 (790 Muslims, 254 Hindus), with 223 reported missing and another 2,500 injured. Unofficial estimates put the death toll closer to 2,000. More than 100,000 people were driven out of their homes and joined the ranks of the internally displaced. A large number of mosques and dargahs, some temples and a few churches were destroyed. The violence resulted in huge property losses, overwhelmingly among Muslims.
That's the problem with being a minority. If you start anything, you get stomped. Still, unlike the anti-Sikh riots in 1984, the State had no hand in the killing.
The horrors of the Gujarat pogrom did not escape attention across India and internationally.
Though it was NATO which ended up killing 1.4 million mainly Muslim people and displacing tens of millions more. Still, it is true, saying 'Modi kills Muslims', made Modi very popular. Sadly, since he didn't actually kill Muslims- probably because the guy is a Hindu and believes that he will suffer in the next life for anything he does in this- he had to concentrate on Development and good governance
In the aftermath, Modi reportedly twice came close to being dismissed by the BJP’s leadership but was retained and went on to win three elections over the next decade, becoming the longest-serving chief minister of his state. In March 2005, the United States denied him a diplomatic visa
because that was what Manmohan wanted. It backfired. The US was slaughtering Muslims all over the place. Manmohan was their pal. Modi wasn't.
and his existing tourist/business visa was revoked under a little-known section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that rendered any foreign government official who “was responsible for or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom” ineligible for a visa to the US.
This was a godsend. The Left used to say the BJP was CIA financed. Yet it was their pal, Manmohan, who did the 123 nuclear deal with Uncle Sam.
For more than a decade, until western governments sensed that Modi was headed for India’s top political job, he was informally boycotted by ambassadors of the countries of the European Union.
India was rising in importance. Why not keep Manmohan happy? Also it was hilarious that countries which were spending billions to slaughter Muslims pretending that some Hindu guy had done the same thing.
The US waited until exit polls projected a BJP triumph in the 2014 general election to explain that the relationship with India was “vitally important for economic, strategic reasons”, and the Obama administration looked forward to “working with the leaders chosen by the Indian people” in an election that was “an inspiring example of the power of the democratic process in action”. India’s new prime minister would now be welcomed warmly everywhere within the community of nations.
To be fair, he had also been cleared of all charges by the Supreme Court. It turned out the evidence against him was a pack of lies.
On the legal front, Modi’s role and alleged complicity in the violence were investigated under the direction of the Supreme Court, but a special investigation team appointed by the court cleared him of any criminal wrongdoing in 2012. The rest, as they say, is history.
So, Ram & Co told lies about Modi. But those lies helped Modi. Thus Ram & Co were consigned to the dustbin of history. The wealthy Communist was laid low by a simple God-fearing Hindu. How very sad!
Modi rose to become first chief minister of Gujarat and then prime minister of India in 2014 by testing and perfecting a playbook that combined populism, economic credentials, the Hindu right’s anti-democratic and anti-secular agenda and the strongman’s style of centralised and personalised rule.
N.Ram rose to become the publisher of the Hindu by being born to his Mummy and Daddy. They too held a high status in society because of whom they were born to. Modi was a good CM and then became a good PM. What is surprising is that even ten years later, the Opposition can't field an alternative candidate. But his is because Rahul was born to his Mummy and Daddy. His Daddy was born to a Mummy whose daddy was PM. So, Rahul is the only alternative to a guy who can actually do the job of PM.
Since winning office, his BJP government has made no secret of its intent to consolidate political power along the lines worked out by the ideologues of “Hindutva” and “Hindu Rashtra”.
Did Ram keep his membership of the Communist party a secret? Perhaps. What wasn't a secret was who his Mummy and Daddy were.
Hindutva can be translated as “Hindu-ness”, not so much in a religious as in a “civilisational sense”, according to these ideologues, while Hindu Rashtra connotes a theocratic or semi-theocratic Hindu polity or state, much like its Islamic counterparts.
What Ram approves of is Dynasticism. He inherited his position. Why do people who believe in God think that merit, rather than birth, should matter in politics? Look at North Korea. It has successfully combined dynasticism with communism. That is why so many South Koreans are trying desperately to emigrate there.
Hindutva as we encounter it today is simultaneously a fascistic ideology, whose original and systematised formulation goes back a century, a militant call to action (“Hindu jihad”)
Ram is only for jihad if it is Islamic
in the name of the “Hindu Samaj” (“samaj”, whose literal translation is “society”, is a loaded word here, much like the Muslim “umma”)
Is Ram against the 'umma'?
and a toxic political project conceived and spearheaded by the RSS, which has given the concept organisational clout, salience in India’s political theatre and longevity.
We get it. RSS is not Communist. Nor does it have a dynastic leader. Thus, it is very evil and toxic.
In this constellation of forces, it is the RSS that calls the shots
Modi calls the shots. But he does it in a sensible enough manner.
The formation known as the “Sangh Parivar” is an extensive and multi-layered “family” of scores of organisations and forces that are brought together on the ideological-political platform of Hindutva and are committed, in multiple ways and over the long term, to the anti-constitutional project of Hindu Rashtra.
Ram thinks that eliminating the 'Sanatan Dharma' of the Hindus is the only project compatible with the Constitution.
In this constellation of forces, it is the RSS that calls the shots. As the political front of the RSS, the BJP has sought over time to shape its politics and programmes, keeping in mind the necessity of becoming a mainstream party with broad electoral support. It may therefore have some functional autonomy. Communalism, targeted against minorities (especially Muslims but also Christians) and the punctual use of violence against them are its stock-in-trade. Engineering polarisation on religious and, more recently, on caste lines is a key part of its electoral strategy and tactics.
The politburo did call the shots in Communist parties in India. The RSS did not have the same type of hold over the BJP.
Ten years after he was first elected as the prime minister of a country with a secular and democratic constitution, which came into force on 26th November 1950, Modi demonstrated his disdain for its principles.
No. Modi did exactly the same thing as India's first President, Rajendra Prasad, did at Somnath temple.
At Ayodhya, the mythical birthplace of Lord Rama, whom Hindus believe to be an avatar of the supreme god Vishnu, a massive temple is now being built on the ruins of the Babri Masjid—a 16th century, Mughal-era mosque that was vandalised and razed to the ground on 6th December 1992 by Hindu activists brought together by organisations and leaders associated with the RSS.
Somnath had been sacked by Muslims invaders almost a thousand years previously.
The lines separating religion, the state and politics… were erased in an unbounded show of majoritarian power
Unlike Nehru, Modi hasn't presided over the mass slaughter of Muslims. Unlike Indira, he hasn't jailed his opponents. Unlike Rajiv, no Sikhs have been killed. He hasn't even got the US or the EU to impose visa bans on his opponents. No wonder Ram hates him.
On 22nd January 2024, at that site, Modi played the nation’s grand priest by leading the “Pran Pratishtha” rituals, infusing life into the idol for the child Lord Ram.
Like Rajendra Prasad at Somnath.
In preparation, he had undertaken an 11-day purification ritual that involved fasting and other austerities, visiting temples across the country, inaugurating a big development project or two, and, most importantly, mobilising majoritarian sentiment with an eye to the upcoming general election.
Modi is a Hindu. So are most Indians. That is why Ram hates the country. Sadly, his Mummy and Daddy weren't wealthy Chinese Communists.
With the prime minister’s revelation on social media that “God has asked me to represent the people of India during the ceremony”,
even though Stalin had banned God
both the ruling party and its governments pulled out all the stops to politicise the Ayodhya consecration ceremony.
Apparently, Stalin tried to ban the telecast or any temple celebrations. The Supreme Court prevented this. Sad.
The lines separating religion, the state and politics, laid down within India’s constitutional framework and reinforced by the Supreme Court in a 1994 judgement, were erased in an unbounded show of majoritarian power.
Nonsense! The Bommai judgement says the State can't discriminate against Hinduism even if Stalin doesn't like that religion.
To understand what is happening in India today, we need to be clear that Modi’s party has been radically transformed under the tutelage of the RSS over a period of three decades.
The RSS helped set up the Jan Sangh which became the BJP. Vajpayee, Advani, Modi, Shah etc. belonged first to the RSS.
Founded in 1980 on an amorphous right-of-centre platform, it reinvented itself by strategically adopting a platform of militant Hindutva in the early 1990s.
Nope. It has always been what it is.
Its aggressive pursuit of both old issues of the Hindu right and volatile new ones picked by the party helped it advance in the mass political arena.
No. It was more cohesive than the other Janata factions while Congress was somewhat rudderless after Rajiv's assassination more particularly because Sonia disliked Narasimha while Kesari was utterly useless as Congress President. The return of Rahul, meant Congress could revive. Sadly the boy was either gun-shy or a moron or both.
That Hindutva agenda included pushing for the construction of the Ram temple in place of the Babri Masjid;
which was what the Supreme Court ordered
“Islamic subversion” of Hindu society from within;
France welcomes such subversion- right?
abrogation of Article 370 of the constitution; the promise of an Indian brand of capitalism marked by liberalisation and privatisation under the aegis of Hindu majoritarian interests;
as opposed to what Jewish minoritarian interests?
the refrain of “pseudo-secularism” and “appeasement” of minorities; and the theme of Muslim “infiltration”, as distinct from Hindu “migration” from Bangladesh.
Hindu expulsion from Bangladesh.
The arrival of Modi on centre stage, with a beguiling and seemingly inclusive election manifesto promising “development with and for all”, took the political stock of the BJP to another level.
Anyone can promise anything. Modi had a track record. Manmohan was decrepit and powerless. Rahul wouldn't step up to the plate.
The party’s success in the 2014 general election put an end to a quarter century of centrist coalition governments.
corrupt coalition governments. Jyoti Basu, a Communist, could have headed one. But his politburo put its foot down.
Reinvigorated, it won an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, and the personality and style of work of the new prime minister gave the Hindutva movement a boost. The old leaders of the BJP were sidelined or dropped.
As Modi will be when he gets too long in the tooth.
The era of the strongman who would brook no opposition, no dissent, no competitor and no institutional obstacle did not take long to announce itself.
Modi jailed his opponents. He tortured Stalin. Ram himself was beaten and raped by Hindu harridans.
There was a major new factor at work: the massive acclaim and support, moral and material, his regime received from big business. This nexus between the BJP and big business has been on show everywhere: across television, newspapers, magazines, social media and election funding. It was there too at Ayodhya on 22nd January, when corporate India turned up in force for the consecration of the grand temple.
The Hindu group has been mismanaged by the feuding extended family which owns it. They are rich but probably no longer count as a 'big business'. Sadly, it seems some of the nouveau riche tycoons are still devoutly Hindu. This makes Ram very angry.
The BJP is undoubtedly India’s dominant political party, winning 31 per cent of the vote in the 2014 general election and 37 per cent in 2019. But majoritarian politics is rarely translated to a majority of the popular vote in multi-party parliamentary elections, especially in a vast country where diversities of every kind abound and realities on the ground can change quickly. Even the Congress party, in its heyday and facing no credible opposition at the national level, did not win a majority vote share.
India is a big country with a lot of political parties. So what?
It is worth noting that the BJP’s share of the all-India popular vote has never touched 40 per cent in a general election, and its average vote share over the 10 general elections it has contested between 1984 and 2019 is a modest 22 per cent.
That's what makes this election interesting.
The Congress, by contrast, took more than 40 per cent of the popular vote in the seven general elections it won between 1951 and 1984, almost reaching the 50 per cent mark that year, with a historical average vote share of 36 per cent over 17 general elections.
Ram is saying that is what will happen to the BJP. He may be right.
Elections are about arithmetic as much as anything else, and these numbers suggest that the BJP is far from invincible if the opposition parties work together.
They won't. The Communists are putting up quite a strong candidate against Rahul in Kerala.
The BJP has suffered several setbacks when pitted against strong regional parties and coalitions in state-level legislative assemblies as well as Lok Sabha elections at the state level. It was the appealing arithmetic factor that brought 27 political parties together into the big-tent bloc known as INDIA—an acronym for the Indian National Development Inclusive Alliance—with the primary goal of defeating the BJP in the 2024 general election. With some of the constituent parties at odds with each other at the state level and the sudden defection of Bihar’s chief minister Nitish Kumar and his Janata Dal (United) party to the BJP camp, the coherence of the INDIA bloc and its effectiveness in minimising the fragmentation of the anti-BJP vote is an open question.
There is a chance that Congress will gain a little at the expense of its allies compared to 2019
On the economy, the Modi regime could still come unstuck.
Too late.
As chief minister of Gujarat, Modi built a reputation among the middle classes and big business for ruthless efficiency in executing both development and Hindu-supremacist projects.
Stalin has a reputation for ruthless inefficiency.
That reputation has, of course, been taken to another level as prime minister. However, significant infrastructural development and a quantum jump in incentivised corporate investment—the “Gujarat model” showcased by Modi and his admirers—may have come at the cost of generous government subsidies and improved economic growth for the state.
Ram thinks 'improved economic growth' is a cost not a benefit.
Data shows that when it comes to social indicators such as poverty, infant mortality, nutrition, education, employment, health and the environment, Gujarat did not make any significant progress and continues to lag a long way behind the progressive southern Indian states, especially Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
Data shows that data is shit.
The government’s narrative emphasises, as evidence of the prime minister’s current masterly management of the economy and his inclusive approach, a decent rate of GDP growth, currently the highest among the G20 economies; the construction of highways, tunnels and rural roads; welfare programmes such as the free distribution of food grains; housing and sanitation projects; the massive rollout of Covid-19 vaccines; direct benefit transfers enabled by the digital stack and the mass opening of bank accounts; the surge in digital payments, the switch to a Goods and Services Tax across the country, and so on.
Ram's narrative emphasizes his seeking to suck off Stalin any chance he gets.
Critics, reminding us of the deep damage done to the economy by the November 2016 demonetisation misadventure (in which 86 per cent of cash in circulation was stripped of its status as legal tender) and the disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, say the economy is yet to recover fully from those shocks.
Critics are yet to recover from their cretinism.
Well-known economists, including former government chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian and former governor of the reserve Bank of India Raghuram Rajan, have
fucked off to Amrika. If they are so smart how come they aint billionaires? Come to that, if Ram is so smart how come his family has gone in the scales of the mega-wealthy?
raised doubts about the growth numbers put out by the government, pointing out that the lack of good data and the 2013 change in the method of estimating the GDP suggest that the Indian economy may not have been growing at the official rate. Critics also call attention to the alarming level of youth unemployment (40 per cent), the abysmal fraction of working-age women in employment (one in five, the lowest in the G20 countries, according to economists Raghuram G Rajan and Rohit Lamba), high levels of poverty and mass deprivation, the millions of malnourished children, rising inequality and environmental degradation. “India wastes too much of its human capital,” observe Rajan and Lamba, “and is in danger of frittering away its demographic dividend—the supposed dividend from having a growing share of working-age population—because it is not creating enough jobs.”
You can get paid a little money in Amrika for gassing on about India's poverty. But, if you are smart, you can make a lot of money in Amrika or India or anywhere else.
The perceived nexus of the government and big corporates has also involved a political and economic cost for Modi. Following a report by Hindenberg Research, a US investment research firm specialising in forensic financial investigation and focused on activist short-selling, Modi’s closeness to the billionaire Gautam Adani and the Adani Group of companies has drawn allegations of cronyism and cover-up. Hindenberg’s two-year investigation made the explosive allegation that the Adani Group, then valued at $218bn, had “engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades” and that the government and the regulators had failed to do their job. There has been a furious fightback by the group and the BJP government—the two are seen by the political opposition to be joined at the hip—and the group reject the allegations. But, as a business daily points out, a year after the report “set off a firestorm and a political slugfest for the Adani Group, most of the port-to-cement conglomerate’s stocks are yet to fully recover from this setback.”
If there was no fall out from Anil Ambani's bankruptcy, what damage could a bear raid on Adani do? Allegations aren't evidence. The fact that questions have been raised about Ram shoving his head up Stalin's arse doesn't mean he doesn't eat his own shit.
Surfacing close to the 2024 general election, the electoral bonds scandal has dealt an unexpected blow to the image of the BJP regime. Electoral bonds are in the nature of bearer bonds, which are designed for opacity. The electoral bonds scheme was introduced by the BJP government in early 2017 and operationalised in 2018 after the government amended several laws regulating, or relevant to, electoral finance.
In an Orwellian twist, a scheme tailor-made for donor anonymity, tax evasion and money laundering was sought to be passed off as a way of promoting transparency and electoral reform. A company or an individual could buy electoral bonds of different values from the sole bank designated for this purpose, the State Bank of India, and donate them to a political party.
Secure in the knowledge that the 'bag man' hadn't kept it for himself. Nirmala says she will bring the scheme back.
While India’s top public sector bank held in its possession all the data on electoral bonds, including information on the identities of the donors, the values of bonds they purchased, and which party had encashed these bonds, the public was denied this information. The central government and its coercive agencies had access to this information, as their subsequent actions suggested. The election commission and the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, had cautioned the government against the scheme before it was introduced, and newspaper articles and transparency activists had criticised and opposed it.
It makes no difference whatsoever. If Kejriwal hasn't been damaged by the liquor scam, then such 'criticisms' have no importance whatsoever.
But it was only after a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court unanimously struck down the scheme as unconstitutional—because it violated the voters’ right to information about political funding under the constitution—and ordered the State Bank of India and the election commission to disclose to the public all the data they held under the scheme that the true character and contours of the scandal came to light.
But the effect on the voters was nil.
Thanks to the Supreme Court’s verdict and its firmness in following up and enforcing the judgment to the letter, India’s newspapers, digital news providers, and independent researchers have been able to publish a wealth of stories based on data analysis and about the electoral bonds scandal. A Pandora’s box has been opened, and revelations on political corruption, extortion (through the use of coercive agencies of the state) to pressure unwilling and reluctant donors into coughing up funds for the ruling party, on a quid pro quo arrangement that punished non-donors and rewarded donors,
this is a mere fantasy. On the other hand, it can't be denied that Ram eagerly eats his own shit as a quid pro quo arrangement that pushed stuff up his ass.
and on several illegalities committed under the scheme have come tumbling out. To no one’s surprise, the data shows that, between 12th April 2019 and 24th January 2024, the BJP cornered 47.46 per cent of the funds received by 26 political parties under the electoral bonds scheme, and the encashed electoral bonds fetched the equivalent of around $727m for the ruling party. Its main national rival, the Congress party, received only 11.14 per cent of the funds received under the scheme.
Congress is shit. What is surprising about it getting less money?
Finally, some fault lines have emerged in the BJP voter base
caste based fault lines. That was inevitable. The question is whether the Party can mend fences quickly enough.
which are being papered over by the Modi effect: his robust and seemingly undiminished popularity. A survey just ahead of the 2019 general election by one of India’s most trusted polling organisations suggested that Modi’s popularity accounted for nearly a third of the BJP’s vote. This excessive dependence on a leader,
Congress depends wholly upon its dynastic leader
with no competitor or successor in sight, combined with the age factor—Modi will be nearly 79 at the end of a third term—and ongoing tensions and conflicts within the Sangh family suggest a potential vulnerability for the BJP.
No. Currently, it looks to be getting stronger. That could change.
But the last word must go to India’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman. Presenting her sixth budget, she thrashed the management of the economy pre-Modi; promised a white paper that would outline how the economy might resurge and flourish following the “mess” left behind by the prime minister’s predecessors; argued, against the evidence, that Modi had surmounted the “enormous challenges” he inherited through “structural reforms, pro-people programmes, and the creation of opportunities for employment and entrepreneurship”; and proclaimed that the BJP government would return to parliament this July with a full budget that would unveil a road map for the attainment of “Viksit Bharat” (Developed or advanced India) by 2047, the centenary of India’s independence. It was a hubristic performance from start to finish—but this time she and the party look set to get away with it.
That's all that matters. If you say you will do great things and then you win big, there is no hubris. Ram joined the Communist party and supported the anti-Brahmin DMK. He loathed Modi and the BJP. It seems he bet on the wrong horse. This election may see BJP hitting double digits in Tamil Nadu. Ram can quietly go back to eating his own shit.
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