Skip to main content

The Battle of Varanasi



Varanasi is a saffron city.  The Hindu culture is embedded in the very dust of the city.  It is no wonder that Mr Narendra Modi chose it as his primary battle ground.  The message he is trying to give is that he is the representative of the Hindus, the spokesman for Hindutva if not Hinduism, and also that he is not merely a political leader. 

Shiv Vishwanathan, professor at Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, has written an article titled Why battleground Varanasi is different in today’s Hindu.  The article borders on hagiography showering much accolade on Mr Kejriwal.  In spite of the bias, the article deserves serious pondering.  There are some illuminating ideas.

“Sadly,” says the author, “the chaiwala has now become the agent of corporation.”  This is one of the contradictions that Mr Modi embodies within.  He tries to take pride in his humble origins and use it as a proof of his closeness to the lowly people.  The fact, however, is that he has worked relentlessly for the welfare of the corporate sector.  What the poor have gained, if anything, is the by-product.  How to empower the poor man or the aam aadmi is the question that Kejriwal raises on the other hand, says the article. 

Mr Modi displays the characteristics of an autocrat, of a Fascist leader.  He cannot tolerate dissidence, he does not respect anyone who disagrees with him, and he can use the metaphorical chaiwala’s language (no offence meant to all those chaiwalas who do not ever use the kind of language employed by Mr Modi) to shoot at his opponents.  His jibes using AK 47 are the most recent examples. 

Courtesy The Hindu
Mr Modi is more interested in that kind of discourse.  He likes to mount childish offensiveness against his rivals.  Calling names, bringing in cheap metaphors that may please the man in the chai dukan, and peddling hatred are hardly the traits of a good leader.  As one of the readers writes in today’s Hindu, “What people want to hear from Mr. Modi are his plans to tackle inflation, corruption, instances of farmer suicide, crony capitalism, unemployment, lack of people-oriented growth, and, above all, communalism.”   Mr Kejriwal, on the other hand, speaks about issues that matter.  He refuses to dispense street rhetoric.

Prof Visvanathan thinks that by asking intelligent and relevant questions, “Mr. Kejriwal is inviting India to the new possibilities of democracy.”  That’s important.  A good leader should raise the standard of his people’s thinking instead of playing to the gallery for the sake of applause.

Let me conclude this with a quote from the article.  The view is hagiographical but worth taking a second look at.  “His [Mr Kejriwal’s] message is like a conversation, homely, humble, even deprecating.  Mr. Modi has the personal of a loudspeaker, amplifying his own repetitions.  Mr. Kejriwal has place for the small and marginal, for the gossip of the nukkad.  He is a listener.  Mr. Modi’s personal comes out better as a dictaphone....”

The battle of Varanasi is worth observing.  It is not merely an electoral battle.  It is a battle between the aam aadmi’s aspirations and one man’s personal ambitions.  It is a battle between autocracy and democracy.  Between rhetoric and pragmatism...

PS.  Change.org invited Mr Kejriwal, Mr Rahul Gandhi and Mr Modi to a three-cornered debate.  Mr Kejriwal has accepted the invitation.


Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers







Comments

  1. Is anyone perfect? :) The best thing we can do is choose the best from the worst available to us. :) Rubbishing one political party for few flaws and turning a blind eye to all the shortcomings of the other political party will lead us nowhere. If Kejriwal becomes PM, we can bid goodbye to Kashmir and lose our one of the most beautiful states. The country doesn't run on idealism. One has to be practical too.

    Secondly, Kejriwal is famous for saying something and doing something else. So he's not even what he's portraying himself to be :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's not the party but the leader that really matters, Pankti. The problem is not with BJP, but with Mr Modi. A leader like Vajpayee made BJP a party with a difference. But under Modi, how will the BJP be any different from the Congress? Both have the same economic policies. And there are no other policies in a world of globalisation.

      Which politician sticks to his words today? AK's flip-flops are far more tolerable than those of most others, as far as I understand.

      Delete
    2. It's not the party but the leader that really matters, Pankti. The problem is not with BJP, but with Mr Modi. A leader like Vajpayee made BJP a party with a difference. But under Modi, how will the BJP be any different from the Congress? Both have the same economic policies. And there are no other policies in a world of globalisation.

      Which politician sticks to his words today? AK's flip-flops are far more tolerable than those of most others, as far as I understand.

      Delete
  2. It is going to be interesting contest and India's future is going to be decided. You rightly said it is aam admi vs. one man.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And Indian democracy has come up with many surprises in the past. That's one reason why Mr Modi chose a secure seat in addition!

      Delete
  3. May be this election marks the revolution of change that India has been looking for. Lets hope we utilize the power of democracy wisely. Whatever its we the people who decides the fate of a leader. But hardly we realize that fact!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Helpless Gods

Illustration by Gemini Six decades ago, Kerala’s beloved poet Vayalar Ramavarma sang about gods that don’t open their eyes, don’t know joy or sorrow, but are mere clay idols. The movie that carried the song was a hit in Kerala in the late 1960s. I was only seven when the movie was released. The impact of the song, like many others composed by the same poet, sank into me a little later as I grew up. Our gods are quite useless; they are little more than narcissists who demand fresh and fragrant flowers only to fling them when they wither. Six decades after Kerala’s poet questioned the potency of gods, the Chief Justice of India had a shoe flung at him by a lawyer for the same thing: questioning the worth of gods. The lawyer was demanding the replacement of a damaged idol of god Vishnu and the Chief Justice wondered why gods couldn’t take care of themselves since they are omnipotent. The lawyer flung his shoe at the Chief Justice to prove his devotion to a god. From Vayalar of 196...

Taliban and India

Illustration by Copilot Designer Two things happened on 14 Oct 2025. One: India rolled out the red carpet for an Afghan delegation led by the Taliban Administration’s Foreign Minister. Two: a young man was forced to wash the feet of a Brahmin and drink that water. This happened in Madhya Pradesh, not too far from where the Taliban leaders were being given regal reception in tune with India’s philosophy of Atithi Devo Bhava (Guest is God). Afghanistan’s Taliban and India’s RSS (which shaped Modi’s thinking) have much in common. The former seeks to build a state based on its interpretation of Islamic law aiming for a society governed by strict religious codes. The RSS promotes Hindutva, the idea of India as primarily a Hindu nation, where Hindu values form the cultural and political foundation. Both fuse religious identity with national identity, marginalising those who don’t fit their vision of the nation. The man who was made to wash a Brahmin’s feet and drink that water in Madh...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...