The Pied Wiper’s Tune

Get out of your ivory tower, liberals! Hundreds of millions of spellbound people have followed the Pied Wiper of Congress, and despite your pathetic resistance, there he is. People roared because they saw him bringing rain even as you likened him to dark clouds. They saw him as a dream and you wished him away as a nightmare. Were you not out of your mind? Stop yowling over your defeat. Is he to blame? Rather, it’s your last hope—that is, the hopeless Congress—you should be blaming. This was the party that expected a wondrous mandate for having split one Centre into three centres. A leaderful, leaderless forum! Can you fault people if they went for one Centre, one voice, one leader, a Fuehrer of sorts? The failures of UPA-II not only discredited the Congress, they discredited democracy. Look forward, and worry not.

These dirty Congress rhetoricians, they divided people along religious lines and foisted the blame on the Pied Wiper. Throughout the campaign, he never brought religion to his lips. But the Congress kept crying, “Hindu wolf! Hindu wolf!” Its leaders didn’t want the minorities to think of development, which was drawing Hindus to the Pied Wiper in large numbers. Was this inclusive or divisive politics? Would you still disagree with the Pied Wiper when he vows to eradicate the Congress nationwide, like smallpox? Not only the Congress, but also the SP, the BSP and the RJD. He wants no one in the way when his party reigns by itself and goes about building a multi-religious, unicultural India, shepherding the minorities into their ancestors’ way of life.

He’s truly inclusive. You have tormented him enough. It’s time you made up with him. Like you, he believes in blurring all distinctions. Since his economic vision is no different from the Congress’s, what’s unique is his political vision. He’s not merely going to gobble up the Congress; he’ll also gobble up its political patents and make them his own. Secularism will not merely mean the protection of the minorities; it will mean the broadening of their horizon of history from under 1,000 years to over 5,000 years. Religious discrimination will end with the elimination of privileges for the minorities. The result will be parity: a Godhra balanced with a post-Godhra. It was such True Secularism and True Egalitarianism that characterised Gujarat under Modi. True Socialism, which the minorities in Gujarat have been enjoying for 12 years, will be extended across India.

Join him. He is not the demon of your canvas. He is a hermit. You hounded him. Compared to the persecution he has suffered, the post-Godhra victims were blessed. They may have suffered physically: he had to bear both physical and psychological cruelty. So much so, he went into hiding when he had nothing to hide. Why would he talk to the media? He would speak in Hindi and they would write it out in Urdu. And if they spotted him, they frisked him, examined his clothes, his sunglasses, watch, pen. Was it a crime to dress up hot when you have a sinless body, a potent physiognomy and feline eyes? Didn’t Guru Golwalkar dream of Hindus as martial men with wide-awake eyes?

He is not small-minded like you. He is divinely forgiving. He showed his big heart during ticket distribution. He  allowed free entry to his party. He is as artfully guileless as Shakespeare’s Richard III; he bows down to political compulsions. Corruption may not be in his dictionary, but compulsion is. If he can be so saintly and merciful, would he be ruthless to you, who kept barking and bitching? Take advantage of that window of hope. And enter.

The intelligent among the intelligentsia are flocking to him. He is more liberal than you. Who could have been more far-sighted than unbespectacled Madhu Kishwar, who noticed the sunset of liberalism and transformed herself from a feminist to a ‘masculinist’ well before the sunrise of ultra-liberalism? You call him dictator, malign him for only dictating and not taking notes. But don’t you remember what he said into the misty, sisterly eye of Kishwar’s adoring and nervous camera? He listens to his officers rather than read files. He understands things one-third from reading and two-thirds from listening. See, he is wise. He is not Manmohan Singh: he is not ruined by books.

The Pied Wiper wants to see God in every one of us. This is the last chance for liberals: transform yourself into entrepreneurs. The Pied Wiper’s bag is full of Ram’s talismans. Already, India is on the road to economic recovery, and so is the US and Europe. Imagine the opportunities he is going to unleash. His tenure will discourage cow-eating among Muslims and encourage pig-eating among Hindus. As entrepreneurs, you can thrive on dairy-farming or flourish in pig-breeding. As Muslims will learn to eat only small animals and birds, you will have tremendous opportunities in goat-farming and poultry. You can move from life-threatening cities to unconnected, idyllic villages and grow GM crops there, which might kill the next generation but create a pot of gold for future generations.

Are you wondering where you will find land for your ventures? Come to Gujarat. You will feel transported into Ram rajya. Hills, deserts, arid, semi-arid and fertile areas, seashores and river banks—he’s gifted huge portions to patriots who could afford to pay the public only Rs 10 per square metre in order to serve the country by selling the real estate they develop at Rs 10,000 per square metre. In Ram rajya, there are no auctions, no pricing norms, no questions. With the king of Gujarat taking the Indian throne, can there be any dearth of England-sized estates? He’ll even open up Kashmir and Nagaland for you.

And jobs? Haven’t you heard? “People voted him for jobs. Would he not expect us to create jobs?” No, he won’t barter land for doles; he is not a leftist scoundrel. You can set up capital-intensive industries, as they did in Gujarat. He won’t let your adventurous spirit dip with the burden of providing jobs. He will allow you to treat workers as guests who eat what you serve, not as customers in restaurants who can order what they want.

He is compassionate. Hasn’t he known the hard life? When he sees tears in a pauper’s eyes, the vapours of empathy cloud his eyes over. But when the pauper on the street starts demanding a secure job, or assembles other paupers with placards to peep into a company’s accounts and shower curses on the owners’ families, he loses patience. “In my country,” he roars, “a worker is someone who works in a workplace. The one who does not work can go to no place.”

And, as entrepreneurs, if you are worried that his government will take away all that you save as a result of sucking the last drop of blood out of labour, perk up, for he is set to root out the only two types of terrorism afflicting the country: Islamic terrorism and tax terrorism. How will he build roads, ports, powerhouses and airports then? Well, you have to build them. And what happens when patriotic entrepreneurs fall ill? They pay peanuts from their bulging sacks to go to hospitals other patriots will build. And the poor? Don’t worry, the fright of fees will turn them into entrepreneurs too. And if they fail to? As near-corpses, they’ll have a range of choices: they can sell themselves as cadavers and swim pleasantly in formaldehyde pools or set themselves up as skeletons in anatomy classrooms.

Not buying Ramocracy yet? One last question? Hey Ram, go ahead, shoot! “What is he going to do if entrepreneurs are going to do everything?” Nothing. He will sit on the throne and watch. He’s wedded to governance with zero tolerance for governance. In his American worldview, government is not the solution—Mother India forbid! Government is the problem. Good governance will mean no governance. Patriotic mobs will enforce law and order. Patriotic ceos will run unedited footage of TV interviews of patriots. Impartial commissars will grant permissions for campaign venues and routes. This will make the Election Commission obsolete.

The writer is a senior journalist and the author of Nitish Kumar and the Rise of Bihar, a Penguin book