http://www.telegraphindia.com/1151212/jsp/opinion/story_57928.jsp#.Vmu_Wb8pq38
Politics and play - Ramachandra Guha
Shortly after the 2014 Indian elections, I wrote that although the new prime minister, Narendra Modi, was "an economic modernizer, in cultural terms he remains a prisoner of the reactionary (not to say medievalist) mindset of the R[ashtriya] S[wayamsevak] S[angh]". Inside Modi's mind and soul, these two contrary impulses were fighting for dominance. Which side would win?
This question was asked by many Indians who had voted for Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party. They knew that Modi had joined the RSS as a young man, and that his political and cultural education had been largely within that organization. But they also knew that in his long tenure as chief minister of Gujarat, he had steadily marginalized the RSS, as well as its sister organization, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, within the state. He had also sought to put the 2002 Gujarat riots behind him, and remake himself as a vikas purush, a man of development. Indeed, in his campaign for the general elections, he had conspicuously avoided the polarizing rhetoric that is the stock-in-trade of the RSS and which he had himself used in the past.
Modi's emphatic victory in the 2014 elections was widely attributed to his having focused on the agenda of economic modernization - that is to say, the need to nourish technological innovation, to make manufacturing viable again, to create better infrastructure, and to improve transparency and efficiency in government. Those loyal to the BJP and Hindutva had, of course, voted for him. But many others, themselves not traditional BJP voters, were so disgusted by the corruption and cronyism of the United Progressive Alliance that they had marked their ballot in favour of Modi's party instead. Finally, many young Indians voting for the first time clearly preferred Modi's economic vision and personal vigour to the tired old shibboleths of the Congress.
Politics and play - Ramachandra Guha
Shortly after the 2014 Indian elections, I wrote that although the new prime minister, Narendra Modi, was "an economic modernizer, in cultural terms he remains a prisoner of the reactionary (not to say medievalist) mindset of the R[ashtriya] S[wayamsevak] S[angh]". Inside Modi's mind and soul, these two contrary impulses were fighting for dominance. Which side would win?
This question was asked by many Indians who had voted for Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party. They knew that Modi had joined the RSS as a young man, and that his political and cultural education had been largely within that organization. But they also knew that in his long tenure as chief minister of Gujarat, he had steadily marginalized the RSS, as well as its sister organization, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, within the state. He had also sought to put the 2002 Gujarat riots behind him, and remake himself as a vikas purush, a man of development. Indeed, in his campaign for the general elections, he had conspicuously avoided the polarizing rhetoric that is the stock-in-trade of the RSS and which he had himself used in the past.
Modi's emphatic victory in the 2014 elections was widely attributed to his having focused on the agenda of economic modernization - that is to say, the need to nourish technological innovation, to make manufacturing viable again, to create better infrastructure, and to improve transparency and efficiency in government. Those loyal to the BJP and Hindutva had, of course, voted for him. But many others, themselves not traditional BJP voters, were so disgusted by the corruption and cronyism of the United Progressive Alliance that they had marked their ballot in favour of Modi's party instead. Finally, many young Indians voting for the first time clearly preferred Modi's economic vision and personal vigour to the tired old shibboleths of the Congress.
