How our society transformed from a robust democracy into a fearful one

In Lok Sabha elections 2019, voters must decide whether or not they want to be constantly prodded into a siege mentality that is fearful of real and imagined enemies

As India moves towards Lok Sabha polls 2019, it is useful to recall how our society has been transformed from a robust and raucous democracy into a suspicious and fearful one in the past five years. This time around, voters must decide whether or not they want to be constantly prodded into a siege mentality that is fearful of real and imagined enemies.

Congress leader Sachin Pilot touched upon something important when he observed that people were increasingly using WhatsApp services and landlines rather than mobile phones to avoid invasive eavesdropping by the state. Fear indeed is the key to understanding Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s persona and politics.

Regardless of whether the bombs destroyed 19 trees on a forested hillside, as claimed by Pakistan, or killed 250 terrorists as the BJP claims, a national security narrative has been built around the Balakot strike. Whether that belligerent act has worked on Pakistan remains to be seen, but it has certainly silenced critical voices within India.

Opposition parties became afraid to question the government’s policy lapses and intelligence failures that led to the death of 40 security men in the Pulwama terrorist attack. They could have well asked how those able to detect 3 kg of beef in someone’s refrigerator were clueless about 300 kg of RDX materialising in Jammu & Kashmir. They could ask how the suicide bomber was so definitively identified in the absence of DNA tests, merely through a conveniently available video. Fear of its electoral prospects prevents Opposition politicians from asking these questions.

The Balakot bombings have also turned Prime Minister Modi’s critics within the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh into his cheerleaders. Union Minister for Road Transport Nitin Gadkari was famous for his double entendres, such as his jibe that those who could not even look after their families could not take care of the nation. Now he is only heard on radio spots counselling car users to use seat-belts and follow lane driving.

The heightened national security narrative has had its most pervasive effect on people. They have come to believe that they are constantly under threat, even though there hardly have been any terrorist incidents in the past five years outside of J&K and along the Punjab border. When the prime minister claims, “Modi conducted a surgical strike” and like a Marvel comics superhero says with zooming hand gestures, “They expected a surgical strike on the ground but Modi hit them from the air”, the message is that he alone can protect the vulnerable republic.

Opposition leaders are publicly described as corrupt and the prime minister threatens to lock them up. Although he has not been able to prosecute and jail even one of them, they remain on tenterhooks over what the law enforcement agencies might do. Prime Minister Modi recalled to an audience in Varanasi that Lord Shiva had cautioned him to deliver on his promises saying, “Bete, baatein bahut karate ho, aao idhar, karke dikhao.” Although the reference was to renovating a temple, Lord Shiva might well have been speaking of his extraordinary loquaciousness and lack of delivery.

Non-state instruments have also instilled fear in citizens with covert support of the state. Prime Minister Modi let cow-vigilantism come to full boil before he mumbled criticism of such acts. By then, the purpose of frightening the beef-consuming communities of Muslims, Dalits and Christians had been served even as they were converted into objects of hate deserving of ‘punishment’. Similarly, love between two consenting adults from different religions acquired the frightening epithet of ‘love-jihad’ legitimising violence. The deliberate delay in punishing vigilantes also allowed Hindutva supporters to muscle up and consolidate their support. The same strategy played out when Kashmiri students and traders were attacked in North Indian cities after a terrorist strike in Pulwama.

Singing the national anthem used to be a somewhat pleasant and voluntary way of celebrating the republic. It is now a mandatory performance of nationalism in cinema halls and non-compliance is threatened by public vigilantism. Do we even know why we now have to prove our patriotism by responding to slogans like “Vande Mataram” and “Bharat Mata ki Jai”?

Critics from civil society have been relentlessly silenced by setting the police upon them. Intellectuals have been branded as anti-national and the fear of being incarcerated as ‘Urban Maoists’ is used as a deterrent.

At one time the BJP accused former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of conjuring up fear of the ‘foreign hand’ to persecute political dissenters. The Modi government has followed the same script by cancelling the licences of 20,000 non-governmental organisations, mostly working in the area of rights-based advocacy under the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act, while political parties are allowed to receive contributions from foreign funders!

Modi’s authoritarianism inevitably comes with anti-intellectualism. His government has taken direct aim at academics, writers, students and universities. The revenge of the uneducated demanding their share in forming the public opinion is best represented by those in the Modi Cabinet who celebrate the achievements of ancient Hindu science while fudging their own academic qualifications. At a time when one of India’s foremost scientific organisations, the TIFR, is unable to pay salaries to its staff, research funds are being used to examine extracting gold from cow-urine in Junagarh Agricultural University in the Prime Minister’s home state.

Fear tactics have been most blatantly on display in J&K. Prime Minister Modi has shown no empathy for civilians blinded or killed by the security forces. Indeed, his government rewarded the army officer who drove his jeep around with a Kashmiri man tied to the bonnet as a warning to the local population.

Prime Minister Modi’s narrative has no room for guilt about the damage he has wrought on Indian society and polity. When as prime ministerial candidate in 2014 he boasted of having a 56-inch chest, he sounded like an aggressive primate, like apes and howler monkeys who inflate their air sacs to intimidate and frighten challengers. As he continues to work the fear-psychosis of voters for a second term, they must decide whether they want to continue to subscribe to his construction of India as the ‘Republic of Fear’.