Thinking Aloud:Narendra Modi shows what India can do By Dr Jay Dubashi

DURING the Cold War, an American was haranguing a crowd of Russians in Moscow, but taking care not to criticise the Kremlin.

“You don’t know what is happening outside in the world, because you are not permitted to leave the country. America is now the richest country in the world and also the most powerful. The Americans are not short of any-thing. etc. etc.” he told the audience.

A hand shot up.

“Yes,” asked the American.

“What about the Blacks in America?” asked a timid little Russian.

This is what we used to call the Black syndrome. The Russians knew the Americans were surging ahead, despite what their leaders told them. But they could always embarrass the Americans by mentioning Blacks.

We have a similar syndrome in India – let us call it the Narendra Modi syndrome. Modi has done in Gujarat what no other Chief Minister has managed to do anywhere else in the country. The secularists don’t like this, so whenever Modi is praised for his achievements in Gujarat, they ask, what about the riots of 2002?

This is what the foreigners used to ask, because that is what they were told. But not anymore. They—have now suddenly realised that men like Narendra Modi cannot be stopped and must be given their due.

The Economist of London has a full page story on Gujarat in its latest issue. “So many things work properly in Gujarat,” the story begins, “that it hardly feels like India.” Sandeep Bhatia, a manager for CEAT, a tyre company, says it took only 24 months to complete the factory, including the normally fraught process of buying land. There is constant electricity, gas and abundant water. The state government, he says, kept the red tape to a minimum, did not ask for bribes, and does not interfere much now.

Gujarat accounts for five per cent of India’s population but 16 per cent of its industrial output and 22 per cent of its exports. Its growth has outpaced India’s and there is a lot of talk about exporters switching from China to India. Gujarat might play the role of industrial locomotive for the country, as Guangdong province did for China in the 1990s.

Against the charge that some people have been left behind – particularly farmers and Muslims— Gujarat can point to reasonable growth in agriculture, helped by irrigation schemes. Against this, there are the riots of 2002 in which as many as 2,000 people were killed, most of them Muslims. But Muslims have not done too badly either, as the economy has grown.

Narendra Modi has done well to invite The Economist to Gujarat and help him see things for himself. Now the secularists, who are intellectual slaves of western culture and media, will have to think twice before running down Modi as a monster. Had the piece appeared in an Indian paper or magazine, these secularists would have turned their noses at it. But it is The Economist which carries the piece, and for secularists of India, it is almost like the Bible.

I have never read Arundhati Roy because I do not like what she writes. Instead of Booker, if she had received some local prize, nobody would have looked at her book twice. But the Booker made all the difference. Sixty years after Independence, we continue to be slaves of westerners and lap up everything they do and write, particularly about us, because we always look at ourselves through the Western prism as Nehru did, long before he became Prime Minister.

Everything about Nehru was western. He studied in the West, though he never was a brilliant student. His wife died in the West. His daughter also studied in London, though she never took a degree or diploma. Nehru used to go to London and Europe every year and mix with the glitterati there, and they lapped him up, as you lap up a dog. His autobiography was published in London first, and then only in India. The rising middle class in India believed he was a Westerner, and so did he. I am a product of the East and the West, he wrote, and they all clapped. Actually, he was not a product of the East at all. He was an intellectual slave of the West, and looked at the world through their eyes. When the Britishers handed over power to him, they were handing it over to one of their own men. Nehru himself said he was the last Englishman in India.

I think we should play the same game, because the intellectual slaves of the West are still very much active in India. They run the universities, they run the media, they write the books we all read, and they contribute to foreign newspapers we all lap up. Once you get a Booker, it means you are accepted by the West, and are therefore a certified Westerner. So whatever muck you write goes, just as whatever anybody says in London or New York goes.

Narendra Modi and his government did well to invite the correspondent of The Economist and show him around. He should also invite others – if he has not done so already – and take them around. Let them meet not only businessmen but Muslim families and let them see for themselves what has happened and what is happening.

Modi should open offices in London and New York and have a dialogue with people there. This is what everybody does, why not Gujarat? Tatas had an office in London and also one in Switzerland even before the war, which explains why they have such a good image in the West. Narendra Modi has done more in Gujarat in ten years than Tatas in their entire business career. He should have a representative – an ambassador in fact or a brand ambassador – in key Western cities, not just to attract investment but to spread the word. If the secularists can do so, why not Modi & Co?

We are now operating in a globalised world, and we should be a part of this world, instead of shunning it in the name of ideology. As I have said again and again, this century is going to be a Hindu century, just as the last century belonged to the West. So why not make a beginning with a saffron flag planted right in Trafalgar Square!
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