Narendra Modi was once again at his element at a conclave in Delhi. Organised by a weekly magazine, the conclave was attended by the great and the good, the glamourous and the powerful, the have arrived and the wannabes. They sat, in the glittering lights of a luxurious hotel room, wearing dark suits and pleased expressions, staring in awe at the man who had appeared to lead this nation out of its deep morass and cynicism. He would take us to the Promised Land, this divine apparition, who has developed the mysterious strength to be at many places at the same time. They laughed at his witticisms and cheered his bombastic promises. To say that this was a captive crowd would be an understatement; this was a band of devotees of the Modi cult.
With this, Mr Modi appeared to have shrugged off the embarrassment of being disinvited by Wharton Business School. That would have been a feather in his cap — to be speaking to an institution in the heart of the US academic establishment, to a group of future CEOs, but the protests of a few troublesome Indian-origin academics (not the ideal kind of NRI, really) tripped up the event.
It is important to understand that the invitation came not from Wharton but from the Wharton India Economic Forum, one of the many student bodies in the school that is allowed vast amounts of autonomy to function. With Gautam Adani as the sponsor and Mr Modi as a speaker, the WIEF’s board must have seen it as a double bonus — it was a win-win situation for all, which is something that CEOs, present and putative, like to engineer. But it was not to be.
At the Delhi conclave, Mr Modi was in his element — “My Gujarat, My farmers”, he said. There was however no “my fellow citizens” or “my Muslim brothers”. Real men don’t do compassion or inclusiveness. It’s my way or the highway, or something worse. If you raise your head, you risk getting it cut off.
Mr Modi seeks to project a brand of masculinity that has no time for namby-pamby things like protection of minorities or indeed the weak, because the weak merely act as a drag on the mighty. The best way is to leave them behind — if some of them catch up, fine; as for the rest, they can wither away and die.
And that attitude is precisely what appeals to a new band of Modi fanboys and fangirls that has emerged in recent times. He always had followers in his home state, who voted him back to power again and again.
Big business too, always looking for new places where they can conduct their affairs without worrying about pesky things like unions or NGOs or alert citizens, embraced him. Now brand Modi is winning over new adherents — at the next level of businessmen, among socialites, the media, writers, academics and students. These neo-converts to the Modi cult are not just passive disciples — they are ready to do anything for him. They come on television talk shows and pounce on anyone who dares to criticise him, they write paeans to him, they tweet and they post on the social media. Many of them are influential and are ready to use that influence to benefit their new-found Lord.
The recent film, Kai Po Che, based on the book 3 Mistakes of My Life by Chetan Bhagat is a good example of how far a neo-cultist will go to protect his idol. In her marvellous blog on the NYTimes India Ink site, titled “Kai Po Che and the Strange Case of the Vanishing Villain”, Snigdha Poonam has shown how Bhagat, who wrote the script, dropped the crucial bits from the book. The book is about three friends whose lives are altered after the Godhra fire and the subsequent riots happen in Gujarat 2002. In the book, there was mention about a “Hindu party” and the riots were shown as a “state-sanctioned exercise”, she writes. “But in the book he excised that completely.”
Bhagat defends himself by saying that “Why and how has it (the riots) happened that really is an opinion. And that the film doesn’t have.” In the past, Bhagat has shown no compunctions in having an opinion; even going to the extent of saying writers must have and give opinions.
It is his business what he believes in, but seen with his other actions — meeting Mr Modi and posing for a picture with him, praising his vision for development writing ambivalent articles about the Gujarat riots etc. show a pattern. He has probably had a change of heart about Mr Modi (which is his right) but is not yet ready to come out of the closet fully.
There are many such people — some public figures, some not — who have begun to discover virtues in Mr Modi. Often they use subtle arguments that are tilted towards him (“you can’t ignore his developmental agenda”) but the message is clear. They are characterised by a refusal to acknowledge any flaw in their supreme leader. They are not given to saying, “let us move on from the events of the past”, which is what the older followers said. That at least hinted at the possibility that there was something sordid about what happened. The neo-cultists feel that the riots are a non-issue and in any case have nothing to do with Mr Modi. They honestly (in a manner of speaking) do not understand what the fuss is about. A few score Muslims killed? Well that happens all the time in India. But look at those shiny new factories!
Alas, for Mr Modi, there is bigger world out there, beyond these controlled, fawning audiences, who are ready to titter when he dismisses any question on the riots (look up my answer on the Internet). In this real world, which has not yet swallowed the Modi brand of happy pills, questions will always be asked and answers will be demanded. And for every conclave in a five star hotel, for every lecture to commerce students and for every video-conference to patriotic NRIs, there will be a prestigious conference that will be cancelled.
The emergence of the neo-groupies will only embolden those who believe Mr Modi has much to answer for. Time Magazine was easy to manage, but just three professors have ensured that a lecture to Wharton students did not happen. Mr Modi’s fans will have to work harder in the coming days.