Sorry, it's not 'appeasement': PM Modi must woo minorities

In pulling off such a massive win, Narendra Modi and the wider Sangh Parivar have emphatically succeeded in making the point that they set out to make — namely, that if the majority community sticks together the minorities can be reduced to irrelevance, rendered impotent, and left to stew in their own juices, so to speak. Modi’s triumph is the stuff of majoritarian electoral arithmetic. Much has been written about the potential dangers of such politics. If numerical superiority can be relied upon to win an election it can also be put to other, more sinister, uses (remember the show of majoritarian might in Ayodhya?) but we’ll leave that debate for another time. [caption id=“attachment_1525233” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A file photo of Narendra Modi with Muslim supporters. AFP[/caption] For now, the more pressing question is: what next? Where do Modi and BJP go from here vis-à-vis the minorities who they believe did not vote for them out of sheer bloody-mindedness borne out of some inexplicable deep-seated prejudice? Winning the election on the back of an unprecedented consolidation of the Hindu vote was perhaps the easier bit. But now comes the real test of Modi’s famous political vision as he faces the challenge of actual governance. Can he govern such a complex and culturally diverse country effectively if large sections of its population continue to feel excluded? It is not enough for Modi to say that he will work for “all Indians”. We know what happened in Gujarat despite his working for “all Gujaratis”, but more importantly for a variety of historical reasons all Indians are not the same much as one wishes that they were. There are groups who need protection against discrimination and, sometimes, even extra help to overcome their social and economic backwardness irrespective of the causes. Their religion ought not be invoked to deny them help by raising the bogey of minority appeasement. To make such groups feel safe and give them a sense of belonging is not “minorityism” or “appeasement” but civilised governance, as I’ve argued before. It is in nobody’s interest to let millions of citizens languish in backwardness on the specious ground that helping them will mean playing “identity politics”. Quite apart from the fact that such a policy is a prescription for breeding social tension, ultimately it hurts overall national progress if a sizeable segment remains mired in poverty and backwardness. In the end, they become a burden on the rest of the society and drag it down. After an election that has thrown up so many dubious “firsts”, Modi is set to become the first Indian prime minister who lacks cross-community support. It is not only in relation to Muslims that he is up against a huge trust deficit. Minorities in general are suspicious of his tub-thumping Hindu nationalism. He cannot simply wish away the 170 million Muslims plus some 26 million or more Christians and assorted other minorities who may have reason to feel alienated. If for no other reason than sheer practical commonsense, it is imperative for him to reach out to them. And this will require going beyond the fuzzy talk of “sabka saath, sabka vikas” . What is needed is a public gesture of conciliation. A big handshake. Concrete measures for minority welfare such as following up the recommendations of the Sachar Committee can follow but, for starters, he can make an effort, at least, to acknowledge the existence of minorities, and to talk to them directly. “He behaves as if minorities don’t exist or are invisible. He should assure them that there will be no discrimination against them on grounds of religion. Why does he deliberately avoid using the term ‘secular’ as if it is a dirty word? Instead, he should declare that secularism shall remain an essential concomitant of Indian democracy,” said Syed Saif Mahmood, a young Supreme Court lawyer. So far, however, Modi has not given any indication how he intends to bridge the rift. His emotional Central Hall speech has been hailed as a defining moment of his leadership, not least because for the first time the outside world saw the “softer” side of a man who revels in his “hard man” image. Leaving aside the occasional hint of melodrama, he sounded statesmanlike and inclusive with his repeated pledge to govern for the whole country. But in his long speech, suitably peppered with references to the country’s poor and the downtrodden, he made no attempt to allay the anxieties of minorities. Not once did he mention them even indirectly. It is all very well to argue that when he talked about the poor and the “oppressed” he was referring to them as well. But the truth is (and he knows it better than anyone else ) that it was a deliberate omission. As someone who seldom misses an opportunity to make use of symbols – and as he demonstrated when he broke down during his speech – he has a huge sense of occasion. So he knew that every word he said would be closely scrutinised especially by those who, rightly or wrongly, remain sceptical about him. Here was a huge occasion for him to assure the minorities. And all it needed were a few warm words directly addressing them. That would have done the trick and gone a long way in sending out a message that he cared for them. But he chose not to; and in the process missed a big opportunity. When Modi mentioned the 2001 Gujarat earthquake and recalled how the people of Gujarat came together to overcome the devastation, one would have thought that he would also touch upon another great tragedy that hit Gujarat barely a few months later. But there was not even a passing reference to the 2002 riots, a man-made tragedy from which the state has still not fully recovered. He could have drawn on it to warn against sectarian prejudices, and to commit his government to promoting “bhai chaara” across communities. His silence has not gone unnoticed. One Catholic friend pointed out that Modi referred to everyone — farmers, villagers, dalits — but drew a line when it came to minorities. “It was like a teacher calling out everyone else’s name in the class but mysteriously leaving out just one name," said G. Wilson, a researcher. In Vishal Bhardwaj’s Hindi blockbuster Kaminey the hero Shahid Kapoor can’t pronounce the letter ’s’ which lands him in some difficult situations. I’m often reminded of it while watching Modi skirt round words like secularism, Muslim or minorities. It seems he can’t simply bring himself to utter them – like something unpleasant stuck in his craw. Whatever be Modi’s private notions of secularism and identity politics, as the prime minister of a multi-religious and multicultural country he will be expected to be more inclusive than his reputation suggests. No sensible person will quarrel with his denunciation of vote bank politics. Having been its victims, the minorities, particularly Muslims, have now woken up to its toxic after-effects. But any attempt to counter it with majority vote bank politics might hurt the country even more in the long run. Numbers can be used both to unify and divide. We’ve seen enough divisions, let’s talk of unity for a change — and hope that some of the fine sentiments that Modi expressed in Central Hall will not end up as mere platitudes.