Narendra Modi embodies India’s new developmental ethos at an economic level but also its new pride in its profound civilisation. He has captured both India’s glorious past and its vast future potential. He is at home in Shiva temples in Varanasi and Kedarnath and at the same time with the military throughout the country, and with technocrats from throughout the world
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has awakened the heart and soul of India. It is not an India he claims to possess or to be entitled to, but one that he tirelessly works to serve.
Welcome to Narendra Modi’s India!
Some people are saying this and not without justification. Narendra Modi’s massive reelection victory over the numerous opposition parties sternly arrayed against him, including the Congress and the Left, was nothing short of spectacular.
Others are highlighting Modi’s India with trepidation, afraid of one person having so much power in a country the size of India and already creating fear about his second term. These are the same opposition groups unwilling to accept their electoral debacle — which featured a literal hate-Modi campaign devoid of any substance or policy.
The fact is that Modi achieved a clear mandate in the largest democratic election in the history of the world – something India should be proud of and that the world should respect. India’s exercise in democracy, with so many people voting, shows a light to the entire world and raises a question mark on the elites who have come to think that power is their entitlement, not the will of the people.
Meanwhile, India’s media, with little disagreement, announced there was no Modi wave before the election, only to drown in the Modi Tsunami once the election results were tallied. Now they don’t know where they stand.
His landslide victory proves that Modi has gained the trust and respect of the people of India in a way of no previous prime minister since Indira Gandhi. His popularity reaches into the masses as well as into new entrepreneurs, including the young and the old.
It is not that India has fallen for a personality culture of Modi but that Modi has awakened the nation’s enthusiasm and aspiration in an unprecedented manner. Modi’s transparency of action is quite different than the shadows of Indira’s dictatorial tendencies or the older UPA proxy government, when even who was actually running the country was a matter of doubt. The new India is not simply Modi’s India but India awakened to its true potential and cultural power.
Modi embodies India’s new developmental ethos at an economic level but also its new pride in its profound civilisation. He has captured both India’s glorious past and its vast future potential. He is at home in Shiva temples in Varanasi and Kedarnath and at the same time with the military throughout the country, and with technocrats from throughout the world.
Clearly Modi’s opponents were numerous and powerful, entrenched within the media, academia, Bollywood and India’s massive bureaucracy. They mustered a lot of foreign support, clearly seen in how the western media uncritically echoed anti-Modi forces — putting out anti-Modi articles from Indian authors at key phases of the election and afterwards to discredit the new government.
Modi’s BJP is the largest national party, in fact now the only credible national party in India. His main opposition Congress party was wiped out in most of the states of India and only exists in a few pockets mainly in the south. The party is in disarray and disintegrating with its president Rahul Gandhi caught between resignation and denial.
India’s leftist elite remains in mourning, blaming everyone but themselves, their leaders or their poor election skills. They would make Modi’s victory a freak born of money, power and intimidation. This cynical view of the voters only shows the elites’ bankruptcy of ideas and vision. They still have nostalgia for the old Nehruvian state socialist policies that kept them in power and affluence. But Nehruvian India has been replaced by Modi’s India and there is no going back.
This new India is not simply the India of Modi but also the India that is Bharat, as the constitution says, recognising India’s vast civilisational past, not just a new modern nation since 1947. It embraces all the great leaders of the Independence Movement, including Sardar Patel, Veer Savarkar and Subhash Chandra Bose among the many that Nehru and his cohorts had neglected.
Modi’s India also honours India’s modern gurus including Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Chinmayananda and Dayananda as architects of the nation. It does not seek its credibility or inspiration from British socialists, Chinese or Soviet communists or JNU Marxists. It has pride in Yoga, Ayurveda, Vedanta, Buddhism, temple art and architecture, festivals and pilgrimages that give India its deep wisdom and cultural beauty.
Modi has awakened the heart and soul of India. It is not an India he claims to possess or to be entitled to, but one that he tirelessly works to serve.
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