For much of his political life, Narendra Modi has posed as the electorate’s savior from the impending and exaggerated threats his own rhetoric conjured up for them.
In the 2002 state elections in Gujarat, he set the theme for the campaign with a few deft sentences, “The songs which Sonia Gandhi and some English TV channels were singing about Gujarat after Godhra have obviously been heard across the border. Now mian Musharraf is repeating their accusations against me in an international forum. ”
Modi managed to convey that the dynasty which had ruled this country for so long was not only mocking a majority of the electorate but was also providing fodder to India’s greatest enemy—a mian no less— to exploit the aftermath of Godhra.
For the Lok Sabha election in 2014, he assumed the persona of thechaiwalla who, once and for all, would rid this country of the same dynasty, which, he now claimed, was threatening to usurp the achievements of icons such as BR Ambedkar. “It is unfortunate that these days Congress party's shehzaade (prince)—Gandhi—enjoys humiliating Baba Saheb Ambedkar by repeatedly saying that Congress has given this right or Congress has given that right. All the rights and laws have been given to us by Ambedkar.”
Over the years, in Modi’s speeches, the dynasty—from Sonia Gandhi to the shehzaade—had come to embody a world of inherited privilege that was running the country into the ground. Modi himself, on the other hand, became in this conception a man who had risen by the sheer dint of his hard work. His 56-inch chest was the bulwark between the people and feudal exploitation.
It was a strategy that served him well, perhaps too well. The results of the 2014 elections established Modi as the giant-killer who had slain the dynasty, reducing its bloodline to political insignificance. But while a fairy-tale would have ended there, leaving Modi to rule happily ever after, the reality of democracy is that it does not suffer heroes gladly.
Modi does not seem to have realised the significance of the metamorphosis that a few months in power have wrought. By the time he stepped onto the stage at Ramlila Maidan for his first rally for the Delhi campaign, he could no longer pose as a chaiwalla. He was now the prime minister of a country, a distant and powerful leader who had cut anyone of any stature in his party down to size. He had successfully made his ascent to power, and stood shoulder to shoulder with heads of state from China, Japan and the United States.
The man who was his challenger in Delhi was no member of a dynasty. On the contrary, Arvind Kejriwal had crafted his own image with as astute an understanding of rhetoric and political imagery as Modi had. During the 2014 elections, he had taken on Modi in Varanasi and lost. Kejriwal was collateral damage in the battle to end the rule of the dynasty, but he had picked up a few lessons in the course of this defeat. He had seen how Modi fed off criticism, especially any which evoked the 2002 violence against Muslims in Gujarat.
At Ramlila Maidan, Modi began by terming Kejriwal a liar and an anarchist. Kejriwal responded by not retaliating, by not providing Modi with a target. He avoided any direct reference to Modi and his party, the Aam Aadmi Party insisted that the popular mandate was for Modi ruling at the centre and Kejriwal ruling the capital. Kejriwal’s refusal to engage in combat was in keeping with the political persona he has so successfully assumed: of a shabbily clothed man with a racking cough, perpetually on the verge of falling sick at any turn of the weather. It successfully concealed the reality—of a man who was once part of the country’s bureaucratic elite. If in the past Kejriwal undermined his persona with his rhetoric— often appearing to be in hurry to achieve his ambitions, eager to smear opponents with charges of corruption— during this campaign he enhanced it with a tone which was as humble and forbearing as his appearance.
This shift resulted in the kind of reversal of prevailing perceptions Modi used to specialise in. The battle between a once lower-middle-class Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pracharak and a former Class I Indian Revenue Service officer was transformed into the spectacle of a powerful prime minister bent on squashing the `muffler man’ who was not even fighting back.
The more Modi strutted on the world stage with US President Barack Obama on Republic Day, the more he flaunted his awkward first-name references to Barack, the more he displayed the pinstripe suit that spoke of self-aggrandisement and unseemly expense, the more he played into the hands of a man who did not even get an invite to the Republic Day parade.
Yesterday, as the results poured in, it became clear that Modi had been beaten at his own game. The man who once used the dynasty as a perfect foil to play up his humble beginnings had been outmaneuvered. The posturing that had once made Modi a giant-killer succeeded only in making him look like a bully.