What do the BJP leaders see when they look at themselves in the mirror? Do they feel betrayed by their own lack of trust (in others) and absence of confidence (in themselves)? Since they don’t believe in answering questions or being accountable, we probably won't know.
But what they do see is the other as an object for poking holes. Their favourite practice target is Rahul Gandhi, if it is not his dead great-grandfather – Jawaharlal Nehru. This week they chose to trivialise Gandhi’s ‘Smash the Patriarchy’ event in Pune as a ‘comedy show’. The event had introduced a fresh element into Indian politics. Here was a leader listening to the young women of India and together with them, making a statement – that the women of the country deserve better, not through doles and some welfare sops, but by challenging the very root of gender inequality: Patriarchy.
Whether or not someone finds that impressive, the BJP’s crass remarks evoke a question: what gives an unaccountable entity standing to judge anyone else's accountability?
The BJP has been in power for 14 years in India. Its prime minister, Narendra Modi, has maintained a uniform track record of holding no press conferences and answering no questions. The ‘comedy-show’ remarks land in the same week that US Ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, dropped the bombshell: Modi’s sole request to Trump ahead of the June 17 meeting on the sidelines of G7 summit in France was ‘no questions during the press conference’, but Trump (conveniently) forgot and went ahead anyway.
Gor’s revelations, even if embarrassing, are no secret. Modi has earned a reputation like no other Indian leader. He consistently evades interactions other than tailor-made ones, where he can offer scripted answers to embedded journalists, or speak about inane matters like sucking mangoes, saving a baby crocodile in his childhood or possessing a digital camera in the 1980s. Everything is designed to buttress his image.
Modi shuns any press conference or an interview. During his frequent foreign tours, he conspicuously evades the foreign press, and this is now being noticed internationally. Earlier this year, a Norwegian journalist asked a direct question at another questionless press briefing, asking Modi whether he would take questions from “the freest press in the world”.
Later, MEA Secretary Sibi George, during a presser, responded to similar questions with a long lecture on India’s civilizational history and followed it with an embarrassing remark: Indian leaders don’t need to answer the press because they interact with the public directly.
Perhaps, Rahul Gandhi gave a live demonstration of that rare interaction – even though on a small scale. Modi’s interactions with the public, however, are of a different genre. A staged show with a tamed audience and sanitized questions, if at all. With more regularity, it is a monologue with the public through his Mann Ki Baat – reaching out to millions but hearing none.
Towers don’t need ears, and that is exactly why they mock those who use theirs. Partly, also because such irrationality would drown any questions of reason.
A deflection is good to evade accountability for a prime minister and his deputy, Amit Shah, who refuse to attend Parliament when cornered by the opposition with questions. Their sole response to the questions asked by the now-rising youth of the country is not an assurance to set the house in order but to point fingers with name-calling and pontificate over Gen Z’s abusive choice of words.
They’d rather dismiss the entire public as ‘anti-national’ or a ‘dimagi Naxal’ instead of smelling the coffee and understanding that they cannot go about their business, as usual, armed simply with arrogance and an artificially padded public image which has already been deflated and their bluff called out.
There are visible signs of a large section of the public, if not all, shifting. But Modi and his loyalists continue to invent a new enemy. The situation invokes Bertolt Brecht’s poem ‘The Solution’ – perhaps, aptly written to reflect a similar situation in another era, in another piece of geography.
After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Have you liked the news article?