The anointment of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as prime minister-designate should the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party win the looming general election of May 2014, is a denouement filled with dreadful implications which neither the reckless middle class which has rallied to his banner, nor the nation’s under-educated majority have adequately grasped. The belated misgivings of L.K. Advani, the eclipsed octogenarian leader of the BJP who seems to have some idea of the inevitable descent of the country into civil strife, fascism and dictatorship should the Modi-led BJP win, have been ignored by a narrowly-educated middle class and an intelligentsia which can’t see the wood for trees. For all its faults and mutation into a grand coalition of political dynasties — according to writer Patrick French (India: A Portrait, 2011), 90 percent of Congress members in the incumbent Lok Sabha are scions of post-independence political families — its saving grace is that it has a secular tradition stretching back over a century. On the other hand, it’s incontrovertible that the prime intent and purpose of the BJP — the political arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu revivalist organisation committed to reversing the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan — is to end “appeasement” of the country’s Muslim minority and abolish community scriptural laws under which minorities are governed in matters of marriage, inheritance and worship. Unapologetically majoritarian in its political philosophy, the RSS/BJP is committed to a uniform civil law and is opposed to affirmative action quotas for Muslims and other caste and religious minorities. It is also committed to the abolition of Article 370 of the Constitution which accords special status to the Muslim-majority state of Jammu & Kashmir whose accession to India in 1947 has been continuously disputed by nuclear-armed Pakistan. The dangerous majoritarian political philosophy of the RSS/BJP is compounded by the abrasive personality and style of Modi, the three-term incumbent chief minister of the western seaboard state of Gujarat (pop.60 million) since 2001. During this period, which began with a callous anti-Muslim pogrom in which over 3,000 citizens were murdered by riotous mobs as the government stood idly by, Gujarat has become a crucible of fascist majoritarian politics — essentially an alliance of government and big business hostile to labour, civil rights groups, the media and minorities. Clearly, as general election 2014 draws near, having to choose between the spoilt brats of the Congress kleptocracy and the plainly fascist BJP which will surely plunge the nation into a Kashmir-style low intensity civil war, slowing down all socio-economic development, is a cruel dilemma. Therefore it’s a matter of utmost importance that the country’s intelligentsia, which has had the benefit of real education, supports and proclaims several new political formations — Lok Satta, Aam Aadmi Party and Children First Party of India — struggling to save the country from the evil Congress, fascist BJP, and marauding family firms masquerading as political parties in the states. This is not the time to discharge the…
