First Vajpayee, now Nehru: Is PM Modi channeling his inner Panditji?

Other political leaders choose to put their icons on the pedestal. Not Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He takes inspiration from them and loves to either usurp or outstrip them.

In the run-up to the 2014 elections and after, he did it with his mentor Lal Krishna Advani who has been completely eclipsed by the larger than life persona of his former disciple who had accompanied him in the Gujarat portion of his controversial Somnath to Ayodhya rath yatra in 1990. Modi was also then party chief Murli Manohar Joshi’s saarthi during the latter’s highly charged Kanyakumari to Kashmir ekta yatra where the senior BJP leader  amid tense security hoisted the national flag at Srinagar’s Lal Chowk in 1992 to underline the idea of One India.

Advani and Joshi have been turned into anachronisms in the new dispensation dominated by Modi.

Taking over or overtaking the Nehru & Vajpayee legacies?

And now it appears he intends to outstrip two other leaders in particular: one, who he acknowledges as an inspiration by visiting him ahead of important events, namely the ailing and ageing party icon Atal Behari Vajpayee who is completely unaware of what is happening around him; and the other who he pointedly and self-consciously ignores—as he did in his Independence Day address—that is India’s first prime minister and Congress stalwart Jawaharlal Nehru. Both Vajpayee and Nehru have been charismatic leaders with mass appeal cutting across the divides that separate parties, politics and peoples.

That would leave the legacies of Indira—who like him during her period was a popular, charismatic, controversial, polarizing and an authoritarian figure— and Rajiv legacies to be dealt with, while former prime ministers like Morarji Desai, Lal Bahadur Shastri, VP Singh, Chandra Shekhar, HD Deve Gowda or IK Gujral had too short a tenure though some of them redefined India’s politics and economy.

Will be succeed vis-a-vis Nehru and Vajpayee as he did with Advani and Joshi or is he overreaching himself this time in trying to bottle them all in his persona?

Modi may have modeled himself on Vajpayee who was considered a mesmerising orator by trying to emulate him in his speeches and some of his hand gestures. Even his 2014 slogan of ‘Abki Baar, Modi Sarkar’ was a reworked copy of the BJP’s Vajpayee-centric slogan of ‘Abki Baari, Atal Bihari’. But he overshadowed the BJP stalwart by singlehandedly delivering a clear majority to the BJP in 2014—a feat that the former prime minister fell far short of despite his acceptability across a wide spectrum.

The best that the Advani-Vajpayee team could fetch for the saffron brigade was 182 seats in 1998 and 1999. By bringing another 100 seats for the party which had been starved of power for a decade, Modi rewrote the BJP’s history in 2014 and became its new shining star which threatens to remain until it burns itself out or is swallowed up by another.

Edging out Nehru?

The second icon he is trying to put in the shade without uttering his name is Nehru. It was a coincidence that Modi was sworn in on May 26 and his new government had its first official working day on May 27—Nehru’s death anniversary.  Not that the entire day is devoted to recalling the contributions of leaders who have passed away but on this occasion, all attention was focussed on Modi, the SAARC leaders who attended his swearing in, his new team and his top priorities and challenges.

If that was a coincidence, the September 5 event was clearly a well- thought out plan when Modi left his imprint on former president S Radhakrishnan’s birth anniversary by combining  Teacher’s Day with School-Children’s Day by addressing lakhs of school kids across the country who translate into a vast untapped catchment area of later day voters.

It would be interesting to see how he deals with November 14, Nehru’s birth anniversary which is celebrated as Children’s Day or Bal Divas in honour of the former prime minister who is Chacha Nehru to them. Will he finally acknowledge Nehru whose contribution to India’s development which he and his colleagues have either churlishly ignored or rubbished as evidenced in BJP president Amit Shah’s controversial remarks that had Sardar Patel been allowed to handle the Kashmir issue, all of J&K would have been part of India.

Echoes of Nehru

Despite his aversion to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, Modi has once too often emulated Nehru. His first Independence Day speech, which won him plaudits, bore an uncanny resemblance to Nehru’s I-Day broadcast on August 15, 1947 which was delivered hours after his ‘Tryst with Destiny’ midnight speech.

Nehru had described himself as a “sevak’’, a servant of the people who would remain in office as long as they decided to keep him there. “Fellow Countrymen, it has been my privilege to serve India and the cause of India’s freedom for many years. Today, I address you for the first time officially as the First Servant of the Indian people, pledged to their service and their betterment. I am here because you willed it so and I remain here so long as you choose to honour me with your confidence,’’ said Nehru.

Sixty seven years later, Modi spoke the same language from the ramparts of the Red Fort.  “…On this day of sacred festival of independence, the prime servant of India extends greetings to all dear countrymen. I am present amidst you not as the Prime Minister, but as the Prime Servant.’’

In 1948, in the backdrop of the bloodshed that marked the partition of the country, Nehru pleaded for reconciliation and peace to rebuild the nation. “Our first and immediate objective must be to put an end to all internal strife and violence which disfigure and degrade us and injure the cause of freedom. They come in the way of consideration of the great economic problems of the masses of the people which so urgently demand attention….Today, there is no time for quarrelling…unless we prove false to our country and our people.’’

Modi, on his part, appealed for a moratorium on such violence if the country has to move forward: “whether it is the poison of casteism, communalism, regionalism, discrimination on social and economic basis, all these are obstacles in our way forward…Let’s put a moratorium on all such activities for 10 years… Let’s experiment for once.”

More recently, he seemed steeped in the Nehruvian vision and philosophy rather than in the RSS ideology when he spoke to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. His politically correct responses may have been addressed to the world audience ahead of his departure for the United Nations—where he would like Vajpayaee address the General Assembly in Hindi—and the United States. But the fact that he said that the Muslims would ``live’’ and ``die for India’’ and would not want anything bad for the country is perhaps the first such statement from a BJP leader.

“My understanding is that they are doing injustice towards the Muslims of our country. If anyone anyone thinks Indian Muslims will dance to their tune, they are delusional,’’ he said to a question about the Al Qaeda’s effort to set up base in India to ‘free’ Muslims from their “oppression’’. The term “Indian Muslims’’ itself is something at Hindutva forces do not like; they prefer to box India’s plurality into a straitjacketed terms like ``Muslim Hindus’’ or “Christian Hindus.’’

Mellowed reaction

There was no trace in the interview of the Modi who berated China without naming it for its “expansionist’’ designs or who may have been bitter about the US denying him a visa after the Gujarat riots, Indeed, he reflected the self-confidence of over 1 billion people when he claimed that the India and China growth story ran on parallel tracks, rising and falling almost at the same time that recalled what former premier Manmohan Singh would aver that there was enough space in the world for both India and China to co-exist and grow and the country, without shutting its eyes to the problems,  was ready to take “small’’ things like the Chinese behavior on the east and south China seas in its stride.

However, Modi would do well to remember how Vajpayee had to cut short his visit in 1979 when China attacked Vietnam or when Nehru trusted Beijing  (then called Peking) far too much and had a war thrust upon him.

In his approach to foreign policy, Modi is more like Nehru than Vajpayee—who left most key decisions to his National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra—in trying to build a world stage for himself and India, taking a keen interest in what happens around the world and how he can influence it.  Nehru was his own foreign minister for 17 years, his approach shaped by the spate of liberation movements including in Africa and Asia. And Modi stamped his imprint that spoke of resilience as well as firmness in inviting the SAARC leaders, cancelling the scheduled Foreign Secretary level talks when the Pakistan High Commissioner met J&K separatist leaders, focusing on immediate and Asian neighbours, putting a premium on the Look East policy,  establishing a camaderie with Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe, building bridges with visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping or interacting with the  BRICS leaders—all in sharp contrast to the US-centric foreign policy of the UPA.

Poles Apart

But the similarities end here. For most part, Nehru and Modi are like parallel tracks that never meet because of different ideologies and ideas about India and society. If Nehruvian philosophy is rooted in secularism, pluralism, inclusion and scientific temper, Modi’s party’s is exactly the opposite. This also explains why institutions like the Planning Commission are seen to have outlived their purpose in a changing India much like Advani or Joshi have in a changing BJP.