Responding to Mr. Narendra Modi

Handling Mr. Modi

JOHN DAYAL

It was not the Christmas response a delegation of Christian leaders from Delhi were expecting when they called on the Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, at his residence on 24^th December 2014 to greet him a day which for them, as for  billions of others in the world, was a day of good tidings and great joy.  This was the practice when Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister at the head of the first National Democratic Alliance, and continued in the decade that Dr. Manmohan Singh held office as the Prime Minister leading the United Progressive Alliance.

This reporter was  not an eye witness, but those who were narrate what followed, and  in great detail, though perhaps in whispers and  with a sense of disbelief. Mr. Modi accepted the bouquet, as he did another from a family and a third group, posed for photographs – mercifully no “Selfies’ as had happened with senior TV and print journalists at his Meet-the-Press earlier last month – and then made it clear the meeting was over. At this time, a few lay members of the delegation told the Prime Minister  they were deeply concerned at the violent and coercive targetting of the Christian community, specially in  rural areas of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, the Ghar Wapsi programmes of the Sangh Parivar that were disturbing the peace across the country. The Prime Minister, they said, could break his silence and reassure the community. His voice would perhaps end this impunity and persecution.

Mr. Modi turned, and ordered the cameras to be turned off – the Prime Ministerial functions are routinely video-graphed by official cameramen. We have just paraphrased versions of an acerbic diatribe that followed. Mr. Modi, in affect,  said the Christian community was making a mountain of a molehill. It was educated, had great access to the media and to international advocacy agencies which blew events out of proportion. He could not take cognisance of every small event, or speak on it.  His focus was on development. Even as the delegation sought to assure him the community was all for the development of their motherland, Mr. Modi said with deliberate coldness “Your compulsions ar different. You may not be able to stand with me.”  He did not clarify his remark in any detail.

But his party men have made it quote clear that anyone who is not volubly supportive of the Prime Minister and his alliterative agenda of development is against the national interest, and therefore, by implication, a bit of an anti-national, if not a traitor. This definition puts a strain, not just on religious minorities, but also on Dalits and Tribals seeking the protection of their rights, their land and their resources. It also pushes into a corner civil society and sections of the majority community if they oppose the  excesses of the Sangh Parivar, specially its maverick groups. These include the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, the Bajrang Dal and a score or more new “senas” and Manch that have sprouted specially in the North and Central region of the country and are the main engines of the aggressive Ghar Wapsi targetting the poorest sections of the Muslim and Christian communities in small towns and villages.

On the eve of the Republic Day visit of the United States President, Mr. Barak Obama, there have been statements by the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Mr. Amit Shah, freshly exonerated of charges of multiple murders in Gujarat, that the Ghar Wapsi campaign does not have the support of the party or the government. There have also been stories planted in a pliant television and print media that Mr. Modi is annoyed at the Ghar Wapsi events as they hurt India’s image, and therefore his project to invite  foreign investments.

But this could be little more than eyewash. Many years ago, the eminent jurist, Mr.  A. G. Noorani, wrote a book “A Division of Labour” in which he meticulously documented evidence and arguments to prove that the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and its daughter-groups such as the VHP worked in tandem, their cadres, programmes and grassroots work merging seamlessly in  targetting various sectors and peoples.  The Ghar Wapsi, and similar programmes, are led by senior members of the Sangh and the BJP, including such luminaries as Adityanath, the head of the Gorakhpur Math, and the lead speaker of the BJP in Parliament on issues of religion and culture.  Defending Ghar Wapsi as “natural” and calling for a national law against conversions are former BJP president and currently union minister, Mr. Venkiah Naidu, and several other of his colleagues in New Delhi and the state capitals. Official spokesmen of the party routinely wage a daily battle on satellite news channels denouncing “missionaries” and linking development with an end to what they say is a missionary effort to change the demography of the nation.

The leadership of the Church, and of other religious minorities, need to fathom how they respond to this challenge, and engage with the lunatic fringe, the ruling political party, and the head of the government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is not going to be an easy task.