Goa Congress to issue show-cause notice to Ravi Naik

The Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) will soon issue a show-cause notice to north Goa Congress Lok Sabha candidate and former Chief Minister Ravi Naik seeking his explanation over his recent statements blaming Dr. Manmohan Singh for Congress's major defeat.

Mr. Naik who lost to BJP's Sripad Naik with a wide margin of over 1.04 lakhs had, among other reasons, blamed Dr. Singh for his failure to reach out to people across the country with the performance of the UPA government.

Congress spokesperson Durgadas Kamat said on Saturday that the decision has been taken in this regard after GPCC president John Fernandes returned to Goa after his three-day visit to New Delhi.

The party lost both seats in Goa, including the Catholic-dominated South Goa seat which is traditionally considered a bastion of the Congress.

Rajasthan: Modi makes ‘Mission 25’ look easy

BJP got support from all sections and in the rural areas

Rajasthan saw a clean sweep by the BJP. In the three Lok Sabha elections held in the last decade, the electoral pendulum in the State has swung from one end to the other in what has essentially been a bipolar political contest.

In 2004, the BJP won 21 seats, in 2009 the Congress turned the tables by securing 20 seats and this time around the BJP has staged a resounding turnaround by capturing all the 25 seats. The earlier occasion when one party won all the seats was in 1984 — the Congress swept the State after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. In this sense, the staggering BJP victory in 2014 is phenomenal.

Eighteen of the 25 BJP candidates decimated their rivals by a margin ranging from 2-5 lakh votes. What caused this historical victory? A simple answer can be that in all the Lok Sabha elections held in Rajasthan after 1998, the party which had won in the Vidhan Sabha elections held a few months earlier also managed to win the Lok Sabha elections. The BJP too carried on from its Assembly triumph and consolidated in the Lok Sabha election.

Another major reason was the deep-seated dissatisfaction and seething anger with the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre and also against the local Members of Parliament. In the post-poll survey, a significant number of voters identified price rise, corruption, unemployment, inadequate supply of drinking water, women security as the issues which determined their voting decision. Nearly half of the respondents observed that the BJP was the best party to solve these problems.

The Modi factor, which was discernible in many other parts of the country, also provided a great momentum for the BJP. The BJP has traditionally done exceedingly well among the non-reserved social groups like Brahmins, Rajputs and trading communities. The real success story lies in the tremendous surge in support which the party received from among the backward communities, Dalits, Adivasis and more significantly among the Muslims.

(Sanjay Lodha and Nidhi Seth are with the Department of Political Science, Mohan Lal Sukhadia University, Udaipur).

The real star in Punjab is AAP

The Punjab verdict is bad news for the two mainstream alliances in the State and signals the rise of a third alternative

Punjab was among the few States that bucked the national trend in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by denying its alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) an outright victory. The ruling combine managed to add only two seats to its 2009 tally by winning six (SAD: 4, BJP: 2) of the 13 Lok Sabha seats in the State, with four seats going to the debutant Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and three to the Congress.

In many ways, the real star of the election in Punjab was the AAP, which managed to secure nearly one-fourth of the total votes polled, thereby emerging as a third alternative in what has traditionally been a bipolar contest between the SAD-BJP and the Congress. It was in the Malwa belt that the AAP registered its best performance picking up all its four seats (Sangrur, Faridkot, Fatehgarh Sahib and Patiala) with an overall vote share of 29 per cent in the region. Of the nine seats that the AAP could not win, it finished third in eight, and in seven of these eight seats, it polled more votes than the margin of victory of the winning candidate.

The AAP dented both the SAD-BJP alliance and the Congress. The CSDS Lokniti post-poll survey shows that 13 per cent of traditional Congress supporters and 17 per cent of SAD-BJP supporters voted for Kejriwal’s party. The AAP performed much better than expected across age groups, classes, castes and communities and localities and its performance is particularly noteworthy among some sections. Among the Hindu Other Backward Classes, four of every 10 voted for the newcomer. Upper class, youth, college educated and urban voters also gave the AAP a strong advantage over its opponents (See table).

What explains the AAP’s spectacular rise in Punjab’s politics? The post-poll data suggest that the AAP benefited from the anger against the Congress-led Union government as well as the anger against the SAD-BJP government. Disgruntled with both governments, many voters opted for the AAP, which succeeded in presenting itself as a viable alternative. About three-fourths of the respondents were of the view that the State government had failed in curbing the menace of drugs. Close to half the respondents felt the government failed in controlling farmers’ suicides. Price rise, corruption and unemployment were the other major issues. The AAP, it seems, was ahead of other parties in raising these issues. The survey data show that AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal is very popular in Punjab.

The Punjab verdict is bad news for the two mainstream alliances in the State and signals the rise of a third alternative.

(Jagrup Singh Sekhon teaches Political Science at Guru Nanak Dev University, Punjab. Ashutosh Kumar teaches Political Science at Panjab University, Chandigarh)

Educated, urban voters flocked to BJP in MP

Huge victory margins indicate party’s expanded base across all social sections

The Bharatiya Janata Party has won a landslide victory in Madhya Pradesh, winning 27 of the 29 seats, its best performance ever in the State. The party’s victory almost resonates with the results in other bipolar States in the neighbourhood such as Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat.

The BJP swept the Assembly election held in Madhya Pradesh a few months ago. The difference between the vote share of the party and the Congress increased from 8 per cent during that election to 19 per cent this time. Only two Congress stalwarts, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Kamal Nath, managed to retain their seats. The result of this election is significant in the State in terms of its victory margin: in the 27 seats, the margins ranged from one lakh to four lakh, while in the 2009 election, the margins in most constituencies were in the thousands.

The extraordinary performance of the BJP was based on the solid platform created by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan during the Assembly election. It was further strengthened and consolidated by the Narendra Modi wave. The rank and file of the BJP was completely charged up . The campaign revolved around the fact that if the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance forms the government at the Centre, the State will get an extra boost for development. The Congress’s abysmal performance in this election is also due to the overwhelming anti-incumbency against the United Progressive Alliance government. In the whole campaign, issues of development remained crucial for the BJP and paved the way for this huge victory.

When an electoral victory is so resounding and the gap between the two contestants so large, it goes without saying that the winning party must have expanded its base across all social sections squarely. Yet, some social sections were more enthusiastic in their support for the BJP. For instance, this time, almost one-third of the electors were from the age group of 18-25. The BJP secured a 54 per cent vote share, which is the highest ever by any party in the State.

Post-poll survey data show that non-literates gave almost equal preference to both the Congress and the BJP. However, among the educated groups, there is a marked higher preference for the BJP. The party did exceedingly well in rural areas and also retained a complete grip in urban areas. Though the poor tend to divide their vote between the two main contenders, most other income groups are clearly in favour of the BJP.

OBC consolidation

The Other Backward Classes group is numerically the biggest social group in the State. The BJP appears to have further consolidated its hold in this group. Among the OBCs, 67 per cent voted for the BJP and 19 per cent for the Congress. The data suggest that the Brahmin and Rajput communities have shown an extraordinarily higher preference for the BJP, and a similar pattern prevailed among other upper castes as well. The Dalit vote was divided between the BJP and the Congress (43 per cent and 42 per cent, respectively).

The Bahujan Samaj Party’s support base among the Dalits was reduced to 6 per cent. The real enigma of the whole electoral scene is that the BJP led in the tribal-dominated constituencies of the State. The Congress could only retain votes from the bottom of the social pyramid, while the BJP got votes from all social groups with further consolidation among the upper castes and the OBCs. The only exception were the Muslims who overwhelming supported the Congress; the BJP received only 8 per cent of the Muslim votes. This very clearly shows that in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, almost all caste and class groups shifted towards the BJP owing to a popular assessment of the State government.

Yatindra Singh Sisodia is Professor at Madhya Pradesh Institute of Social Science Research, Ujjain.

In Chhattisgarh, BJP builds on success of 2009

The BJP’s vote share among Dalits rose to 37 per cent while among the lower OBCs it rose to almost 60 per cent.

The BJP, which swept the Lok Sabha polls in Chhattisgarh, improved its vote share in the 16th Lok Sabha polls.

The party polled 48.5 per cent votes in an election that also saw a steep rise in turnout (a 14 per cent rise culminating in over 69 per cent polling). With the Raman Singh government voted back to power in the Assembly elections held just a few months ago, the BJP’s victory was not unexpected. It only indicated the terminal situation in which the Congress finds itself. Unable to fight back against the BJP, it had to be satisfied with a lone seat from the State. In this strictly bipolar State, the difference in the vote share of the two main parties is a huge 10 per cent.

Youth buck trend

In this otherwise one-sided election, a few interesting patterns deserve to be noted. Defying the patterns in many other parts of the country, the young voters in the State favoured the Congress more than the BJP (over half the respondents in the age group of 18-25 voted for Congress as against 40 per cent voting for the BJP). Second, the Congress improved its base among the urban voters (42 per cent) while the BJP consolidated its support among the rural voters (51 per cent).

Post-poll survey also shows that the BJP’s vote share among Dalits rose to 37 per cent while that among the lower OBCs rose to almost 60 per cent. Correspondingly, the BJP also gained among the poor and lower-income voters. Interestingly, while many States reported an upper caste consolidation in favour of the BJP, in Chhattisgarh it lost some support from the upper castes though it ended up being the main beneficiary of their support.

With a popular State government in power, the outcome of the polls could not have been very different. Yet, The Congress’s inability to relate to voters is starkly brought out by the fact that even various Central government schemes that benefitted underprivileged voters were identified with the State government. Those who benefitted from schemes such as MNERGA or National Rural Health Mission, etc. gave the credit to the State government for these benefits (see Table). This failure of the Congress ensured that the popular State government and the image of Narendra Modi would bring a near-total victory for the BJP.

(Anupama Saxena teaches political science in Guru Ghasidas University, Bilaspur)

The real star in Punjab is AAP

The Punjab verdict is bad news for the two mainstream alliances in the State and signals the rise of a third alternative

Punjab was among the few States that bucked the national trend in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by denying its alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) an outright victory. The ruling combine managed to add only two seats to its 2009 tally by winning six (SAD: 4, BJP: 2) of the 13 Lok Sabha seats in the State, with four seats going to the debutant Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and three to the Congress.

In many ways, the real star of the election in Punjab was the AAP, which managed to secure nearly one-fourth of the total votes polled, thereby emerging as a third alternative in what has traditionally been a bipolar contest between the SAD-BJP and the Congress. It was in the Malwa belt that the AAP registered its best performance picking up all its four seats (Sangrur, Faridkot, Fatehgarh Sahib and Patiala) with an overall vote share of 29 per cent in the region. Of the nine seats that the AAP could not win, it finished third in eight, and in seven of these eight seats, it polled more votes than the margin of victory of the winning candidate.

The AAP dented both the SAD-BJP alliance and the Congress. The CSDS Lokniti post-poll survey shows that 13 per cent of traditional Congress supporters and 17 per cent of SAD-BJP supporters voted for Kejriwal’s party. The AAP performed much better than expected across age groups, classes, castes and communities and localities and its performance is particularly noteworthy among some sections. Among the Hindu Other Backward Classes, four of every 10 voted for the newcomer. Upper class, youth, college educated and urban voters also gave the AAP a strong advantage over its opponents (See table).

What explains the AAP’s spectacular rise in Punjab’s politics? The post-poll data suggest that the AAP benefited from the anger against the Congress-led Union government as well as the anger against the SAD-BJP government. Disgruntled with both governments, many voters opted for the AAP, which succeeded in presenting itself as a viable alternative. About three-fourths of the respondents were of the view that the State government had failed in curbing the menace of drugs. Close to half the respondents felt the government failed in controlling farmers’ suicides. Price rise, corruption and unemployment were the other major issues. The AAP, it seems, was ahead of other parties in raising these issues. The survey data show that AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal is very popular in Punjab.

The Punjab verdict is bad news for the two mainstream alliances in the State and signals the rise of a third alternative.

(Jagrup Singh Sekhon teaches Political Science at Guru Nanak Dev University, Punjab. Ashutosh Kumar teaches Political Science at Panjab University, Chandigarh)

Modi - ‘Chaiwallah’ to dream merchant

I will not walk on the beaten paths

Mine are different, random walks.

(From Modi’s poem Introduction to the Honeybee)

Polariser, divisive, more recently, Danga Babu (rioter) to his detractors; visionary, leader, efficient administrator to his supporters — there is no consensus on who Narendra Damodardas Modi is.

From an ordinary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pracharak to a general secretary of the BJP, from taking oath as the Chief Minister of Gujarat to becoming the BJP’s prime ministerial nominee, Mr. Modi’s rise within the party and on the national political scene is as mystifying as his persona.

Born in a poor family, took up odd jobs, left home, left his wife, joined the RSS that paved the way for his entry into politics, started at the bottom and finally rose to the most coveted position — this snapshot of Mr. Modi’s life is tailor-made for the celluloid. Except, the horrific 2002 Gujarat riots sketched his character in complete opposition to that of hero. Those opposed to his politics and sceptical of his “secular credentials” continue to see him as a man who will spell doom for a secular India.

So how did Narendra Modi emerge as the “leader” chosen by a secular and democratic India?

In tandem with the concerted opposition, a tactically planned and executed image-building exercise has been credited for the turnaround — from a leader not acceptable to the “seculars” to a man who can offer a “stable government” and “good governance”. The corporate sector has chipped in with the approval of the “vibrant Gujarat”.

Those who work with him say he is not one to depend on others and leads from the front. While his team provides inputs, he reads up on the places he visits and talks of issues that will forge an instant connection between him and the people.

He has even managed to adroitly use every barb thrown at him to his advantage. “Woh naamdar hai, mai kaamdar hoon [they have the legacy, I have the credentials].” He used the meant-to-be derogatory “chaiwalla” (tea seller) comment to establish himself as an ordinary man who was challenging the high and the mighty.

Promising more jobs, a robust economy, national security, improved international ties and inclusive growth and development, the “merchant of death” has become the dream merchant for the young, the wearied and the doubtful.

How Modi defeated liberals like me

What secularism did was it enforced oppositions in a way that the middle class felt apologetic and unconfident about its beliefs, its perspectives. Secularism was portrayed as an upwardly mobile, drawing room discourse they were inept at

On May 17, Narendra Modi revisited Varanasi to witness a pooja performed at the Kashi Vishwanath temple. After the ritual at the temple, he moved to Dashashwamedh ghat where an aarti was performed along the river. The aarti was more than a spectacle. As a ritual, it echoed the great traditions of a city, as a performance it was riveting. As the event was relayed on TV, people messaged requesting that the event be shown in full, without commentary. Others claimed that this was the first time such a ritual was shown openly. With Mr. Modi around, the message claimed “We don’t need to be ashamed of our religion. This could not have happened earlier.”

At first the message irritated me and then made me thoughtful. A colleague of mine added, “You English speaking secularists have been utterly coercive, making the majority feel ashamed of what was natural.” The comment, though brutal and devastating, was fair. I realised at that moment that liberals like myself may be guilty of something deeper.

At the same time moment, some Leftists were downloading a complete set of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks fearing that the advent of Mr. Modi may lead to the withdrawal of these books. The panic of some academics made them sound paranoid and brittle, positing a period of McCarthyism in India. It also brought into mind that both Right and Left have appealed to the state to determine what was correct history. With the advent of the Right, there is now a feeling that history will become another revolving door regime where the official and statist masquerade as the truth.

Secularism as a weapon

I am raising both sets of fear to understand why Left liberals failed to understand this election. Mr. Modi understood the anxieties of the middle class more acutely than the intellectuals. The Left intellectuals and their liberal siblings behaved as a club, snobbish about secularism, treating religion not as a way of life but as a superstition. It was this same group that tried to inject the idea of the scientific temper into the constitutions as if it would create immunity against religious fears and superstitions. By overemphasising secularism, they created an empty domain, a coercive milieu where ordinary people practising religion were seen as lesser orders of being.

Secularism became a form of political correctness but sadly, in electoral India it became an invidious weapon. The regime used to placate minorities electorally, violating the majoritarian sense of fairness. In the choice between the parochialism of ethnicity and the secularism of citizenship, they veered toward ethnicity. It was a strange struggle between secularism as a form of piety or political correctness and people’s sense of religiosity, of the cosmic way religion impregnated the everydayness of their lives. The majority felt coerced by secular correctness which they saw either as empty or meaningless. Yet, they correctly felt that their syncretism was a better answer than secularism. Secularism gave one three options. The first was the separation from Church and State. This separation meant an equal distance from all religions or equal involvement in all religions. There was a sense that the constitution could uphold the first but as civilisations, as communities we were syncretic and conversational. One did not need a parliament of religions to be dialogic. Indian religions were perpetually dialogic. The dialogue of medical systems where practitioners compared their theologies, their theories and their therapies was one outstanding and constructive example.

There was a secondary separation between science and religion in the secular discourse. Yet oddly, it was Christianity that was continuously at odds with science while the great religions were always open to the sciences. Even this created a form of coerciveness, where even scientists open to religion or ritual were asked to distance themselves from it. The fuss made about a scientist coming to office after Rahukalam or even discouraging them from associating themselves with a godman like Sai Baba was like a tantrum. There is a sense of snobbery and poetry but more, there is an illiteracy here because religion, especially Christianity shaped the cosmologies of science. In many ways, Ecology is an attempt to reshape and reinvent that legacy.

Tapping into a ‘repression’

What secularism did was it enforced oppositions in a way that the middle class felt apologetic and unconfident about its beliefs, its perspectives. Secularism was portrayed as an upwardly mobile, drawing room discourse they were inept at. Secularism thus became a repression of the middle class. For the secularist, religion per se was taboo, permissible only when taught in a liberal arts or humanities class as poetry or metaphor. The secularist misunderstood religion and by creating a scientific piety, equated the religious with the communal. At one stroke a whole majority became ill at ease within its world views.

Narendra Modi sensed this unease, showed it was alienating and nursed that alienation. He turned the tables by showing secularism — rather than being a piety or a propriety — was a hypocrisy, or was becoming a staged unfairness which treated minority violations as superior to majoritarian prejudices. He showed that liberal secularism had become an Orwellian club where some prejudices were more equal than others. As the catchment area of the sullen, the coerced, and the repressed became huge, he had a middle class ready to battle the snobbery of the second rate Nehruvian elite. One sensitive case was conversion. The activism of Hindutva groups was treated as sinister but the fundamentalism of other religions was often treated as benign and as a minoritarian privilege. There was a failure of objectivity and fairness and the infelicitous term pseudo-secularism acquired a potency of its own.

While secularism was a modern theory, it was impatient in understanding the processes of being modern. Ours is a society where religion is simultaneously cosmology, ecology, ritual and metaphor. Most of us think and breathe through it. I remember a time when the epidemics of Ganesha statues were drinking milk. Hundreds of believers went to watch the phenomena and came away convinced. I remember talking to an office colleague who returned thrilled at what she had seen. I laughed cynically. She looked quietly and said, “I believe, I have faith, I saw it. You have no faith so why should the Murti talk to you.” I realised that she felt that I was deprived. She added that the mahant of a temple where the statue had not drank milk had gone into exile and meditation to make up for his inadequacy. I realised at that moment that a lecture on hygroscopy or capillary action (the scientific explanations) would have been inadequate. I could not call her illiterate or superstitious. It was a struggle about different meanings, a juxtaposition of world views where she felt her religion gave her a meaning that my science could not. I was reminded that the great Danish physicist, Niels Bohr had a horseshoe nailed to his door. When Bohr was questioned about it, he commented that it won’t hurt to be there. Bohr had created a Pascalian Wager, content that if the horseshoe brought luck it was a good wager, but equally content that if it was inert it did no harm. I wish I had replied in a similar form to my friend.

For a pluralism of encounters

I realise that in many places in Europe, there has been a disenchantment with religion. I have seen beautiful churches in Holland become post offices as the church confronted a sheer lack of attendance. But India faces no such problem and we have to be careful about transplanting mechanical histories.

Ours is a different culture and it has responded to religion, myth and ritual. The beauty of our science Congress is that it resembles a miniature Kumbh Mela. But more, our religions have never been against science and our state has to work a more pluralistic understanding of these encounters. Secularism cannot be empty space. It has to create a pluralism of encounters and allow for levels of reality and interpretation. Tolerance is a weak form of secularism. In confronting the election, we have to reinvent secularism not as an apologetic or disciplinary space but as a playful dialogue. Only then can we offer an alternative to the resentments that Mr. Modi has thrived on and mobilised. I take hope in the words of one of my favourite scientists, the Dalai Lama. When George Bush was waxing eloquent about Muslims, the Dalai Lama commented on George Bush by saying, “He brings out the Muslim in me.” I think that captures my secular ethic brilliantly and one hopes such insights become a part of our contentious democracy.

Those who forget and those who can’t

While Narendra Modi’s victory was built on forgetting, he should now address those who have memories

We have entered the “age of forgetting,” said the historian, Tony Judt, in his 2008 book Reappraisals. “ ... we have become stridently insistent — in our economic calculations, our political practices, our international strategies, even our educational priorities — that the past has nothing of interest to teach us ...; on seeking actively to forget rather than to remember ....”

In this age of active forgetting, among the things that people seemed to have cared about less and less in this election are the Emergency, the 1984 riots, the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Gujarat 2002, not to speak of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination and the freedom struggle. This collective amnesia of the masses is what helped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) more than the Congress. “Can’t we move forward?” became the constant refrain of Indian voters, particularly, the middle class — and the BJP’s campaign echoed that. Not only that, people seemed to have cared less about Rahul Gandhi’s feeble reminders that it was his father, Rajiv Gandhi, who heralded the information age; even the average GDP growth or job creation by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime faded from memory for most.

Campaign styles and content

What rankled instead were the issues of price rise, a leadership vacuum, scandals and the economic sluggishness of the present. Narendra Modi understood this mass psyche — the propensity to forget, live in the present and think only of the immediate future — not of any distant one or of the generations to come. Not only did Rahul Gandhi not understand this, he also appeared to be like a computer whiz who was writing a code without knowing the operating system. When people tend to forget, what and how leaders remind them becomes crucial, as memories can be manipulated through propaganda. That is where the style and content of Mr. Modi became a huge success, while Mr. Gandhi’s became a colossal failure.

For Mr. Modi, history started only in 2002, after the Gujarat riots had ended. All his campaign was about his achievements since then. He constantly reminded people of his achievements, questionable as they may be, and of the Congress’ follies. He collapsed the history of Gujarat and appropriated its glory. He disconnected Gujarat from its history of mercantilism, its geography of being at the centre of global trade routes and cultural cross-currents through effective propaganda, and managed to place himself at the centre of the State’s material progress. He promised to replicate that progress nationally, and people believed in that campaign.

Mr. Gandhi’s relationship with his own history and of the society has been confused. He tried to invoke the legacy of the dynasty, and then disown it, all at once. He promised little, and whatever he promised was not deliverable in the immediate future. An abstract and distant future of mass empowerment and decentralisation carried little traction. His reading of the aspirations of the people was grossly wrong. For instance, during the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections in November 2013, he told tribals that material development was not enough and he would give them self-respect. But his own patronising campaign — that “we have given you these schemes” — disregarded the self-respect of the poor. The younger lot among the lower castes understands empowerment differently; they do not have the memories of oppression that their parents had when the likes of the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Lalu Prasad Yadav and the Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh Yadav addressed them 25 years ago. Mr. Gandhi borrowed Mr. Prasad’s idioms. More fatally, Mr. Gandhi and his advisers — who declared in numerous internal strategy meetings that the “BJP was a regional party of four States” — failed miserably in understanding the changes that were happening under their noses. He made silence a strategy and rarely gave interviews, parroted the same speech at several rallies and kept away from Twitter even as Mr. Modi took the country by storm, calibrating when and what to speak, and setting the social media scene abuzz. At the end of it all, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty’s derelictions which were amplified by Mr. Modi’s campaign stuck in people’s memory.

The abstract vs. ‘solutions’

Mr. Gandhi confused delegation with abdication of leadership. While all politicians spent the time between the last polling day and the counting day on getting feedback from the ground about how things were faring, Mr. Gandhi was already on a flight abroad, even before polling had ended. He indefensibly gave a miss to the farewell to the Prime Minister, and did not think it necessary to communicate anything about this to the Congressmen who he is supposed to lead. That was the moment a true leader was expected to reassure his demoralised followers; this, Mr. Gandhi could have learnt from Mr. Lalu Prasad. While Mr. Modi claimed a manifest destiny by declaring that god had chosen him to lead the country and Maa Ganga had beckoned him to the sacred town of Varanasi, Mr. Gandhi appeared to be struggling hard to shake off the leadership role that destiny had bestowed upon him. Leadership has nothing to do with the country’s course, it is the people who bring in progress, he declared at a rally in Guwahati during the campaign. “I will lead you to prosperity and pride,” Mr. Modi declared in rallies before the election and after winning it. While Mr. Gandhi sounded abstract, Mr. Modi promised “solutions” for those who cared only about the present.

The future and reaching out

Certain attributes such as his ability to draw in investors and being “decisive” could well equip Mr. Modi to deliver for those who live in the present. He has promised thrust in tourism development, and he may focus on some big-ticket projects such as the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor where the impact would be visible soon. Such measures could deliver for those who “actively forget,” and think about the immediate future.

But there is another section — a substantial minority of 13 per cent of the Indian population, the Muslims who have many things from the recent past that they cannot easily forget, the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the Gujarat riots of 2002 being the most prominent among them. “Appeasement of none, justice for all,” is not a reassuring slogan for them, as their wounds fester and their exclusion from Indian public spaces is intensifying. In the November 2013 State Assembly elections that elected 1,589 lawmakers, only eight were Muslims; down from the 20 in the previous term. In the 16th Lok Sabha there are only 22 Muslims, their lowest representation in the last 50 years, according to an analysis in this paper on May 17 (“Fewer Muslims, more women in new House”). Muslims make up only four per cent of parliamentarians though they are 13 per cent of the population. This increasing marginalisation of the Muslims from India’s public spaces cannot be swept under the carpet by a slogan that Mr. Modi considers all Indians equal, because equating the unequals can be severely discriminatory. If they are pushed away from democratic structures, it can have dangerous implications for India. The same holds true for sexual minorities and other marginalised sections.

Mr. Modi is acutely aware of this limitation, and his Sadbhavna campaign in Gujarat in 2011 was an attempt to reach out to Muslims. In the Assembly election campaign of November 2013, his spin masters focussed on the Muslim presence in his rallies. But going by his public pronouncements during the Lok Sabha campaign, Mr. Modi appears to have backtracked on this move. Answering the question why he did not wear a Muslim skullcap, he said: “I respect all customs, but practise only mine.” A Sikh turban and an Arunachal Pradesh tribal headgear were a part of what he considers his.

But addressing Muslim alienation is not the sole responsibility of Mr. Modi. The Congress and all other parties must also take this challenge seriously. Another Congress folly in this campaign was Ms. Sonia Gandhi seeking the Shahi Imam, Syed Ahmed Bukhari’s support. It is amazing that the Congress has hardly a Muslim leader who is rooted in the community — Salman Khurshid lost his deposit in the contest — and is trying to outsource its Muslim outreach to discredited rabble-rousers. The same holds true for the RJD, the SP and the Bahujan Samajwadi Party also, all of which tried to scare the Muslims into voting for them. Building a secular, progressive Muslim leadership is the challenge facing all parties.

For Mr. Modi, increasing the stake of Muslims in his project is an imperative. His victory is built on forgetting. He must now address those who have memories.

Two states in a nation

As I was leaving Pakistan, my thoughts were on the warmth I had received, the many friendly people I had met but equally so on the intimidation I had faced from some quarters, writes Meena Menon, The Hindu’s Islamabad Correspondent who was expelled by Pakistan

Little Amjad stands outside the Bari Imam shrine in Islamabad, thrusting plastic bags for sale through the barbed wire fence. Like the other boys with him, he doesn’t go to school. He makes Rs.100 a day selling the thin and brightly coloured bags for Rs.2 a piece — no fuss over micron thickness here.

As he looks at me with hope, my camera gives me away. He thinks I am a tourist, which means dollars. He grins in disappointment when I tell him I am Indian but he’s excited to have met one. Even the female security guard asks me a lot of questions about India. In the women’s section in the shrine, many of them tell me it is an honour to have met someone from their favourite nation. Coming right after I was told to leave Pakistan in a week’s time, it couldn’t have felt better.

This was how it was when I left for Pakistan in August 2013. After landing in Islamabad around midnight, we went to buy a can of drinking water from a chemist, where we experienced our first taste of welcome. From then on there was practically no one who didn’t exude charm or warmth; the sinister exceptions came much later. With a visa that was restricted only to Islamabad, and which had to be renewed every three months, the paperwork was enormous; the many trips to the External Publicity (EP) Wing, our contact point, were meant to tire us out. Even there they were nice, always ready to offer a cup of tea and words of solace that the visa would be renewed.

Right from the time I reached, there was a constant flurry of activity and plenty of news. The All Parties Conference which endorsed a dialogue with the Taliban, the weeklong series of blasts in Peshawar, especially the attack on the church which killed over 80, the sporadic attacks on the media, the sectarian killings, the blasphemy cases, the Mumbai attacks trial, Parliament and Supreme Court, apart from political party press conferences and other meetings and seminars, all kept me busy.

A subject of interest

In December, the federal government decided to prosecute the former military dictator, General (retd.) Pervez Musharraf, slapped with charges in many high profile cases but who had secured bail in most of them. Covering the trial in the special court meant getting a pass which was graciously granted to me. I had access to Parliament as well, with my pass usually ready on the first day of the many sessions I attended. There was the Jamaat-ud-Dawa’s Hafiz Saeed who had held some rallies, the really large one being on ‘Defence of Pakistan’ day, and directed largely against India and the United States. Covering the Mumbai attacks trial was initially easy, with the lawyers and the prosecutor more than eager to talk to you. Then, one day, I was told not to call anymore for information as my reports were causing trouble.

A word on my spooks. Being an ardent admirer of the Thompson Twins in Hergè’s classic Tintin comics, I didn’t think that I would have my own experience with the bumbling duo. I first saw them at the visa office where they made it a point to get so close to me that they almost bumped into me. It soon became a regular affair. They didn’t stand outside my house till the last two days, but always met the people I did interviews with and asked them questions about me. My friends too were not spared. They were keen on knowing whether my discussions had centred on the Pakistan Army or defence, which was hilarious; with friends there are so many other things to talk about.

The bumbling moment came when they followed my husband and I on Trail six, a charming hike up the Margalla Hills behind the Faisal Mosque. It was obvious that it was their first hike as they kept asking the others on the trail the way back and thought we would return that way too. They gave up halfway and decided to wait for us to return. At the top we found a path that traversed all the way to Pir Sohawa, the highest point in the hills and decided to follow it. I don’t know how long they had waited for us in the blazing sun with no trees for shade and I am sure they didn’t take to that kindly.

‘Write on culture instead’

Early on in January, I was warned by the EP wing that my visa would not be renewed. There was no reason given. I used to submit applications at regular intervals to visit other parts of Pakistan such as Taxila, Lahore, Peshawar and Mohenjo-Daro after the Sindh government had invited us to cover the festival, but there was no reply.

But it was in March, after I had interviewed Mama Qadeer Baloch who had walked over 3,000 km from Quetta to the capital with his small band of followers, most of them relatives of missing persons, that things became serious. A top official grilled me for an hour on why I had done an interview which was “anti-Pakistan” and then demanded to see my notes. He accused me of jeopardising my chances of a visa renewal with such stories, and advised me to write on art and culture instead. Amused, I told him that art and culture were limited in Islamabad and that I had done my best. If the government was so keen that I cover only these subjects, it should have sent me to places of great cultural interest in Pakistan like Taxila, which it hadn’t. I had interviewed Abida Parveen, a personal favourite, on her astounding new album, “Shah Jo Raag,” done a feature on Haroon, the genius behind “Burka Avenger,” and other stories.

For lasting ties

One of the first people I had met was Shoaib Sultan Khan, a bureaucrat, whose inspiring rural development initiatives and connections with India made for a great article. He will remain for me the most interesting person I met there and will leave behind a legacy of lasting ties with rural communities in both countries. For a story on the oral history project, on Partition, being collected by the Citizens Archive of Pakistan (CAP), I had met Khalid Chima and his wife, Nasreen and Dr. Naeem Qureshi, and it was among the memorable meetings I have had. Nasreen lamented that she belonged to a really small minority which still believed in secular values and that they were more endangered than anyone else in Pakistan. The venerable Abid Hassan Minto had the most interesting memories of the Left movement and he jocularly accused me of taking down too many notes (doing a PhD) for a newspaper article. Though I couldn’t visit the Murree Brewery, its CEO, Isphanyar Bhandara was most gracious in granting me an interview in Islamabad. I was glad to hear and know that the spirit of Pakistan lives on despite so many restrictions.

Terror came close to home when the F-8 Markaz — which I used to visit often, and just a stone’s throw away from my house — was bombed on March 3. I heard staccato firing followed by two deafening explosions which shook the house and rattled the window panes. Scenes of devastation were in store at the district courts with pools of blood and body parts everywhere. Soon after, the bombing of the fruit market in the city was a terrifying reminder that the peace talks with the Taliban were not going anywhere.

Thoughts on the media

More shocking news was in store with attacks on Raza Rumi, a kind friend and host, and Hamid Mir, whom I used to often meet in Parliament. He prayed there every Friday. It was shocking that journalists you knew were now either out of the country or in hospital. Some of them were dead too. Despite talk of there being a vibrant press in Pakistan, it was under great stress with repeated attacks and a veiled censorship which meant that certain things couldn’t be written about. Yet, brave journalists and columnists continued with their writing, against all odds.

As I was leaving Pakistan, my thoughts were on the warmth I had received, the many friendly people I had met but equally so on the intimidation I had faced from some quarters. However, I will cherish my hikes, the long walks and some of the good friends I made. I will also remember how the ‘other half’ lives in the capital, in sprawling slums with their broad and stinking gutters; the women from Skardu collecting firewood near an opulent hotel; the threatened Christians huddling under tents after being displaced from their homes; the plight of the Ahmadis and Shias, and a certain grimness that lay behind all that opulence.

And, finally, the subject of culture. The obsession with Bollywood and Indian film music always threatened to dominate our conversations with the only cinema in Centaurus Mall running to full houses even when the most mediocre Hindi film was screened. This was the real Pakistan with people always ready to welcome you and help you along. The salesman at my favourite Khaadi store offered me loyalty points after some last minute shopping. I told him it was too late, I was leaving the country and Indians didn’t get loyalty points here!

Clearly, there are two states within this nation, two states of mind, and, regrettably, the twain shall never meet.

How Modi defeated liberals like me

What secularism did was it enforced oppositions in a way that the middle class felt apologetic and unconfident about its beliefs, its perspectives. Secularism was portrayed as an upwardly mobile, drawing room discourse they were inept at

On May 17, Narendra Modi revisited Varanasi to witness a pooja performed at the Kashi Vishwanath temple. After the ritual at the temple, he moved to Dashashwamedh ghat where an aarti was performed along the river. The aarti was more than a spectacle. As a ritual, it echoed the great traditions of a city, as a performance it was riveting. As the event was relayed on TV, people messaged requesting that the event be shown in full, without commentary. Others claimed that this was the first time such a ritual was shown openly. With Mr. Modi around, the message claimed “We don’t need to be ashamed of our religion. This could not have happened earlier.”

At first the message irritated me and then made me thoughtful. A colleague of mine added, “You English speaking secularists have been utterly coercive, making the majority feel ashamed of what was natural.” The comment, though brutal and devastating, was fair. I realised at that moment that liberals like myself may be guilty of something deeper.

At the same time moment, some Leftists were downloading a complete set of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks fearing that the advent of Mr. Modi may lead to the withdrawal of these books. The panic of some academics made them sound paranoid and brittle, positing a period of McCarthyism in India. It also brought into mind that both Right and Left have appealed to the state to determine what was correct history. With the advent of the Right, there is now a feeling that history will become another revolving door regime where the official and statist masquerade as the truth.

Secularism as a weapon

I am raising both sets of fear to understand why Left liberals failed to understand this election. Mr. Modi understood the anxieties of the middle class more acutely than the intellectuals. The Left intellectuals and their liberal siblings behaved as a club, snobbish about secularism, treating religion not as a way of life but as a superstition. It was this same group that tried to inject the idea of the scientific temper into the constitutions as if it would create immunity against religious fears and superstitions. By overemphasising secularism, they created an empty domain, a coercive milieu where ordinary people practising religion were seen as lesser orders of being.

Secularism became a form of political correctness but sadly, in electoral India it became an invidious weapon. The regime used to placate minorities electorally, violating the majoritarian sense of fairness. In the choice between the parochialism of ethnicity and the secularism of citizenship, they veered toward ethnicity. It was a strange struggle between secularism as a form of piety or political correctness and people’s sense of religiosity, of the cosmic way religion impregnated the everydayness of their lives. The majority felt coerced by secular correctness which they saw either as empty or meaningless. Yet, they correctly felt that their syncretism was a better answer than secularism. Secularism gave one three options. The first was the separation from Church and State. This separation meant an equal distance from all religions or equal involvement in all religions. There was a sense that the constitution could uphold the first but as civilisations, as communities we were syncretic and conversational. One did not need a parliament of religions to be dialogic. Indian religions were perpetually dialogic. The dialogue of medical systems where practitioners compared their theologies, their theories and their therapies was one outstanding and constructive example.

There was a secondary separation between science and religion in the secular discourse. Yet oddly, it was Christianity that was continuously at odds with science while the great religions were always open to the sciences. Even this created a form of coerciveness, where even scientists open to religion or ritual were asked to distance themselves from it. The fuss made about a scientist coming to office after Rahukalam or even discouraging them from associating themselves with a godman like Sai Baba was like a tantrum. There is a sense of snobbery and poetry but more, there is an illiteracy here because religion, especially Christianity shaped the cosmologies of science. In many ways, Ecology is an attempt to reshape and reinvent that legacy.

Tapping into a ‘repression’

What secularism did was it enforced oppositions in a way that the middle class felt apologetic and unconfident about its beliefs, its perspectives. Secularism was portrayed as an upwardly mobile, drawing room discourse they were inept at. Secularism thus became a repression of the middle class. For the secularist, religion per se was taboo, permissible only when taught in a liberal arts or humanities class as poetry or metaphor. The secularist misunderstood religion and by creating a scientific piety, equated the religious with the communal. At one stroke a whole majority became ill at ease within its world views.

Narendra Modi sensed this unease, showed it was alienating and nursed that alienation. He turned the tables by showing secularism — rather than being a piety or a propriety — was a hypocrisy, or was becoming a staged unfairness which treated minority violations as superior to majoritarian prejudices. He showed that liberal secularism had become an Orwellian club where some prejudices were more equal than others. As the catchment area of the sullen, the coerced, and the repressed became huge, he had a middle class ready to battle the snobbery of the second rate Nehruvian elite. One sensitive case was conversion. The activism of Hindutva groups was treated as sinister but the fundamentalism of other religions was often treated as benign and as a minoritarian privilege. There was a failure of objectivity and fairness and the infelicitous term pseudo-secularism acquired a potency of its own.

While secularism was a modern theory, it was impatient in understanding the processes of being modern. Ours is a society where religion is simultaneously cosmology, ecology, ritual and metaphor. Most of us think and breathe through it. I remember a time when the epidemics of Ganesha statues were drinking milk. Hundreds of believers went to watch the phenomena and came away convinced. I remember talking to an office colleague who returned thrilled at what she had seen. I laughed cynically. She looked quietly and said, “I believe, I have faith, I saw it. You have no faith so why should the Murti talk to you.” I realised that she felt that I was deprived. She added that the mahant of a temple where the statue had not drank milk had gone into exile and meditation to make up for his inadequacy. I realised at that moment that a lecture on hygroscopy or capillary action (the scientific explanations) would have been inadequate. I could not call her illiterate or superstitious. It was a struggle about different meanings, a juxtaposition of world views where she felt her religion gave her a meaning that my science could not. I was reminded that the great Danish physicist, Niels Bohr had a horseshoe nailed to his door. When Bohr was questioned about it, he commented that it won’t hurt to be there. Bohr had created a Pascalian Wager, content that if the horseshoe brought luck it was a good wager, but equally content that if it was inert it did no harm. I wish I had replied in a similar form to my friend.

For a pluralism of encounters

I realise that in many places in Europe, there has been a disenchantment with religion. I have seen beautiful churches in Holland become post offices as the church confronted a sheer lack of attendance. But India faces no such problem and we have to be careful about transplanting mechanical histories.

Ours is a different culture and it has responded to religion, myth and ritual. The beauty of our science Congress is that it resembles a miniature Kumbh Mela. But more, our religions have never been against science and our state has to work a more pluralistic understanding of these encounters. Secularism cannot be empty space. It has to create a pluralism of encounters and allow for levels of reality and interpretation. Tolerance is a weak form of secularism. In confronting the election, we have to reinvent secularism not as an apologetic or disciplinary space but as a playful dialogue. Only then can we offer an alternative to the resentments that Mr. Modi has thrived on and mobilised. I take hope in the words of one of my favourite scientists, the Dalai Lama. When George Bush was waxing eloquent about Muslims, the Dalai Lama commented on George Bush by saying, “He brings out the Muslim in me.” I think that captures my secular ethic brilliantly and one hopes such insights become a part of our contentious democracy.

Fourth P-8I maritime patrol aircraft delivered to India

Boeing has delivered the fourth P-8I maritime patrol aircraft to India, which the aviation company described as a milestone.

In all India has placed orders for eight P-8I maritime aircraft.

The latest state-of-the-art maritime patrol aircraft departed from Boeing Field in Seattle and arrived May 21 at Naval Air Station Rajali.

“This marks an important milestone — the halfway-point for P-8I deliveries to India,” Dennis Swanson, BDS vice president in India, on Saturday said.

“The programme’s success in the past year is really a testament to the great work between Boeing, the Indian Navy and industry,” he said in a release.

Based on the company’s Next-Generation 737 commercial airplane, the P-8I is the Indian Navy variant of the P-8A Poseidon that Boeing has developed for the US Navy.

“The Indian Navy is putting the first three P-8Is through their paces operationally, and the P-8I delivered today will begin flight trials in the coming months,” Leland Wight, Boeing P-8I programme manager, said.

The P-8I incorporates not only India-unique design features, but also India-built subsystems that are tailored to the country’s maritime patrol requirements, Boeing said.

In order to efficiently design and build the P-8I and the P-8A, the Boeing-led team is using a first-in-industry, in-line production process that draws on its Next-Generation 737 production system, the statement said.

Nawaz Sharif to attend Modi’s swearing-in ceremony

Pakistan’s prime minister will attend the inauguration of Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi, a first for the nuclear-armed rivals, his spokesman said on Saturday.

Pakistan and India have a history of uneasy relations and they have fought three wars over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir since their independence from Britain in 1947. Saturday’s decision could signal further easing of tensions.

A statement from Nawaz Sharif’s office said the prime minister had been invited this week by New Delhi to attend the ceremony. Mr. Sharif already congratulated Mr. Modi over his Bharatiya Janata Party’s landslide victory in the elections that concluded last week.

State-run Pakistan Television said Mr. Sharif also would meet with president Pranab Mukherjee during his visit.

Relations between Pakistan and India have witnessed ups and down. Relations froze after an attack on Mumbai in 2008 in which Pakistani terrorists killed 166 people. A mild thaw since has helped trade, though not much progress has been made in normalizing bilateral ties.

During the election campaign, Mr. Modi took a tough stance on Pakistan’s role in sponsoring terror attacks in India. But since his victory, Mr. Modi has softened his stand somewhat. He has said that he would like to engage India’s neighbors and have friendly relations with them.

BJP leaders meet Modi, Rajnath Singh

Several senior BJP leaders on Saturday met Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi and party chief Rajnath Singh amid hectic preparations ahead of the new NDA government taking charge on Monday.

Mr. Modi’s close aide Amit Shah and BJP general secretary J.P. Nadda reached Gujarat Bhawan in New Delhi almost together on Saturday morning to meet the Prime Minister-elect. Mr. Shah later met Rajnath Singh.

Senior party leader and former party chief M. Venkaiah Naidu reached Gujarat Bhawan a little later. Uma Bharti, who won from Jhansi Lok Sabha seat, also met Mr. Modi.

Republican Party of India (RPI) chief Ramdas Athawale also met Mr. Modi. He has already gone on record hoping to get a berth in the Modi Cabinet.

There was a steady stream of visitors at Rajnath Singh’s Ashoka Road residence also.

Prominent among those who met the BJP chief were party MPs Maneka Gandhi and Udit Raj and senior Delhi unit leader and Rajya Sabha member Vijay Goel. Former Union minister in the NDA government I.D. Swamy also met Mr. Singh.

BJP general secretary Ram Lal also met the party chief.

Preparations for formation of government have gained momentum with top BJP leaders engaged in a series of confabulations ahead of Mr. Modi’s swearing in on Monday.

Shazia Ilmi quits AAP

Aam Aadmi Party leader Shazia Ilmi has resigned from the party and from membership of all of the party’s forums.

“I am leaving AAP because of the absence of inner party democracy in a party which talks of swaraj. The party is being run by a coterie which takes impulsive decisions and we get to learn about them later,” she said.

The senior party leader said that It was not enough to just name corporates and politicians.

"It's true that sensationalism may have helped us, but it has become like law of diminishing returns."

"The party seems to be directionless. AAP needs to reinvent itself. We need to do more than just agitations and protests," added Ms. Ilmi.

She remarked that Arvind Kejriwal should pay his bail bond and spend time with the party's workers and candidates.

Ms. Ilmi said that she wouldn't be joining any other political party.

AAP uses Kejriwal arrest to dispel cadre anger with party

During review meetings after the Lok Sabha polls a number of AAP MLAs and cadre expressed their frustration at the party leadership for alienating grassroots workers and taking all the critical decisions without taking their opinion.

The arrest of Arvind Kejriwal has become a strategic weapon for Aam Aadmi Party at a time when its volunteers are angry and disappointed with the party high command over its style of functioning particularly during the Lok Sabha polls.

As it was evident during the AAP workers meeting on Friday the party leadership made the most use of Mr. Kejriwal’s arrest in dissipating workers’ anger and postponing their demands for bringing more internal democracy in the functioning of the party.

During review meetings after the Lok Sabha polls a number of AAP MLAs and cadre expressed their frustration at the party leadership for alienating grassroots workers and taking all the critical decisions without taking their opinion.

The workers had blamed the party high command for its dismal performance and accused it of being cavalier in contesting more than 400 seats and ignoring its home turf of Delhi. When the chorus for bringing internal democracy in the functioning of the party had grown very strong the party had assured its MLAs that it will organise a meeting of all the workers of Delhi and restructure its organisational set up.

But when the meeting happened senior AAP leaders appealed to its cadres to subside their anger with the party leadership and instead work to ensure Mr. Kejriwal’s release. “I know that you are angry but I would appeal you to forget your anger and work for Mr. Kejriwal’s release,” appealed senior party leader Gopal Rai.

When AAP leader Manish Sisodia read Mr. Kejriwal’s emotional letter from Tihar jail a larger section of the cadres present in the meeting was charged but some of them were in no mood to suppress their anger, demanding leaders be made to take the responsibility of party’s defeat.

When AAP leader Dilip Pandey was addressing the jam packed hall, several voices tried to make themselves heard demanding that party do away with centralised decision making. Then some of the workers shouted “disband the Political Affairs Committee and the National Executive”, the two decision making bodies in the AAP.

“Haar ki zimmedaari koun lega (who will take responsibility of defeat),” said another slogan from the back rows of the hall. In the meantime, AAP leaders’ speeches saw several disruptions when few workers started displaying posters which said, “take workers’ views in decision making process”, “Disband PAC and National executive”. Amid commotion the party leaders had to calm the cadres assuring that the party organisation is being restructured.