Nevertheless, I was still stuck with the notion that there were so many ingenious ways, direct and indirect, for him to show remorse for the crimes of 2002 without directly admitting guilt, and Modi had shown no interest in doing so at many an opportunity. Or was this Machiavellian? First, do little to stop RSS forces in what many neutral observers said was a methodical killing spree in 2002, and then turn toward development after violence has been used to consolidate power and concentrate the minds of your enemies. But Machiavelli, whose writings are either not carefully read or misunderstood, would not have approved. Machiavelli believed in using only the minimum amount of cruelty to attain a positive collective result, and thus any more cruelty than was absolutely necessary did not, as he put it, qualify as virtue.
“I am from a poor family,” Modi told me. “If I had become a teacher it would have made my family happy. But I got involved in a national patriotic movement, the RSS, where one must sacrifice. As a pracharak, I was like a Hindu monk in a white dress. My Hindu philosophy: terrorism is the enemy of humanism.” I assumed he meant Islamic terrorism, which accounts for most large-scale violent attacks in India. He compared himself to Gandhi: “When the British ruled, so many fought for independence and Gandhi turned this into a mass movement. I have converted economic development into a mass movement psychology.” His words echoed throughout the empty room. “I have a toll-free number where callers hear my recorded voice and can make complaints against the government, and the relevant department must respond within a week.”
He rolled off his accomplishments: modern roads, private railroads with double-decker containers, 31,000 miles of fiber optical networks, 1367 miles of gas pipelines, 870 miles of drinking water pipelines to 7000 villages, twenty-four-hour uninterrupted power in rural areas, the first Indian state with private ports, a totally integrated coastal development plan, two liquefied natural gas terminals and two new ones coming online. Statistics and lists had a rhythmic, spellbinding effect on him. He quantified everything.
He mentioned, too, the plant to be built in Gujarat by Tata Motors, employing several thousand workers, that will produce the Nano, the world’s cheapest car priced at $2500. Luring Tata, perhaps India’s most prestigious company, to Gujarat had been a coup for Modi, and billboards around Ahmedabad proclaimed his accomplishment, attesting to the cult of personality forming around him. “For so long the whole coastal area had been subjugated to Mumbai,” he said. “But now the richness is coming back home to Gujarat. Gujarat will be the center point for East-West connectivity from Africa to Indonesia.”
He was a very driven man, with no personal life from everything that I could gather. He exuded power and control. How could he not have been implicated in the 2002 pogrom? I asked myself.
A number of Hindus, all of them of the enlightened, global cosmopolitan class, as well as Muslims and several foreign writers, told me that there was an element of fascism in Modi’s personality. Sophia Khan, the human rights worker, put it bluntly: “He’s a fascist man. We Muslims don’t exist for him. Our neighborhoods are called mini-Pakistans, while the Hindus live where the malls and multiplexes are.”
Is Modi a fascist? The answer I think is ultimately no. Here is where we are too much influenced by leadership models that are rooted in earlier historical periods. But posing the question serves to further illuminate the danger that Modi might represent. Fascism, the scholar Walter Laqueur tells us, comes in many different stripes, though classic fascism of the kind that emerged in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century stems from defeat in war, or at least a very unsatisfactory victory.12 Fascism is an “anti-movement, it defines itself by the things against which it stands,” and in its hatred of the elite and cosmopolitans it is hyper-nationalistic, writes Juan J. Linz, an emeritus professor of political science at Yale. Modi exhibits little hatred of the elite, and his governing message of developing an infrastructure in order to lure business is positive in outlook. There is, too, fascism’s distinctive style, with its “chants, ceremonies, and shirts” which had attracted so many young people between the two world wars. There is a romantic appeal to fascism that cannot be understood merely by reference to its ideology. Its cultic obsession with brutality and virility, combined with its glorification of military virtues, stresses action rather than reason. The point is to act, and damn the consequences. Between the wars, the uniforms, marches, rallies, and songs all spoke of an almost orgiastic love of the collective—of the group—and consequent hatred of the individual.13 Because democracy protects the rights of the individual, fascism must be anti-democratic. Indeed, fascism usually comes armed with an authoritarian leader who is both ruthless and charismatic. The results can be truly terrifying. The Romanian Iron Guard, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, and the Croatian Ustashi all featured a deeply reactionary Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism that resulted in the most blood-curdling and theatrical of atrocities against Jews and Serbs. Despite the defeat of the Axis powers, because of the way technology promises social control the will to fascism has not gone away.14 The phenomenon of Modi is an indication that, despite the claim in Francis Fukuyama’s brilliant article of 1989, “The End of History,” the battle of ideas continues, even as geography effects how it is played out.
It would appear, therefore, that Modi in February 2002 might have momentarily been a full-fledged fascist, and then quickly declined to being a low-calorie one. “What makes Modi different from Hitler,” Prasad Chacko explained, “is that while Hitler thought fascism the end result of political evolution, Modi knows that Hindutva is only a phase that cannot last, so now he focuses on development, not communal divides.” In fact, Modi has recently gone after the very Hindu nationalists who put him in power, arresting members of the VHP. Because he cannot or will not apologize for 2002, showing that he is less extremist than other Hindu firsters has become his method for becoming acceptable on the national stage, in advance, perhaps, of one day running for prime minister, explained Achyut Yagnik, a journalist and historian.15
Modi was helped in his ambition in the first years of the new century by the general atmosphere of civilizational tension around the world and the region. Whether it was the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the threat posed by Iran, possible chaos in Pakistan, or Islamic terrorism in Kashmir and India itself, Modi and those like him benefited momentarily from all of this. The global situation reminded Hindus—the overwhelming majority of Indian voters—how much they had to fear from Muslim radicalism, and how much Modi signified a strong bulwark against it, not through any specific act, but by the whole aura of his no-nonsense rule. The central question regarding India in the years ahead is whether an era of worldwide Muslim terrorism will lead more of its majority Hindus to despair and hatred. Based on the results of the 2009 national elections, the answer seems now to be no.
Yet in the immediate aftermath of 2002, Modi did not have to do anything anymore. He had made his point. As much as India fears Pakistan, it fears its collapse even more. The threat of Islamic anarchy in the region helps the cause of Hindu nationalism, even as inter-communal tension represents, arguably, a profounder threat to the country than even the increasingly drastic shortage of water. It is not so much radicalization that I encountered in interviews with Muslim victims of the 2002 violence, but a feeling of no longer being part of India. They have withdrawn into their own communities, afraid to venture among Hindus.
The contrary Hindu fear of Islam runs parallel with a more understated but palpable yearning for order. India’s very rise as an economic and naval power has invited comparisons with China, and that, in turn, has led to frustration, particularly among the elites. Whereas the authoritarian government in China can make things happen, development in India occurs only in spite of the government, rarely because of it. The human rights official Hanif Lakdawala told me that, especially because of the nightmarish chaos of Indian cities, “there are at least a few in this country ready to accept a dictator, or at least a very strong leader.”
; Modi’s record since 2002 has been far from perfect. Precisely because of 2002, he has been denied a visa to the United States, and this stigma has had an effect on foreign investment, in which Gujarat ranks third in India, even though it is the prime destination for domestic deal-making. Despite the infrastructure projects, Gujarat still ranks low on scales of human development in India: malnutrition afflicts almost half the population of children under five, anemia afflicts three quarters of the women here, and literacy is only 67 percent—no higher than the average for the country as a whole. There are rumors that GIFT is not being implemented properly, and that the foreign investment required for its takeoff will not be forthcoming in the wake of the global financial downturn.
In fact, what is truly preventing Modi from taking the grand leap of his imagination—that is, from remaking Gujarat into the kind of antiseptic global entrepôt, where, as in Singapore and Dubai, and in many parts of South Korea, you feel you could be literally anywhere—is the ball-and-chain reality of the Indian landscape itself. Take Gandhinagar, Gujarat’s political capital, designed to be a highly regulated model city, liberated from the local milieu. Yet the greenery is overgrown and impossible to manage, cows and water buffaloes wander about, and shanties have sprung up along the main roads. Only in one small section of Gandhinagar made up of information technology companies did I feel as if I might have left India, or at least gone to an office park in Bangalore.
Then there is Ahmedabad, encased in tear-inducing smog, jammed with wailing motorbikes and auto rickshaws, treacherous with its broken sidewalks, and punctuated with stray cows and beggars, even as it constitutes a less jarring experience than the epic congestion of a Mumbai or Kolkata. Ahmedabad, founded in 1411 by Ahmed Shah of the Gujarat Sultanate, was something of a playground for internationally renowned architects in the 1950s, when the Western elite placed newly independent India on a pedestal as the hope of humanity. Le Corbusier designed the Textile Mills Association building, Louis Kahn the Indian Institute of Management, and Buckminster Fuller a geodesic dome. But with the exception of a few gems, Ahmedabad, with a population of 4.5 million, remains weighed down by the same affliction that ails other Indian cities: little of architectural note or beauty between a handful of truly magnificent medieval Muslim monuments and the mishmash of steel-and-glass Dubai-style dwellings of the new-rich which are a product of 1990s economic liberalization. Because Ahmedabad was not a political center for the British, there is no colonial architecture here to lighten the burden of the cheap, drab Soviet-style modernism, further defaced by the jumble of rusty signage, which is the visual legacy of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s long, post-independence rule (even though he was such an inspiring leader in other respects). Of course, Gandhinagar represents this dreary, crumbling modernism at its worst.
India is 37 percent urban. Within the next two decades it will be 50 percent so. Bimal Patel, a local architect, explained that the real governing challenge of India’s leaders will be to make cities like Ahmedabad more aesthetically appealing and habitable. Here is where Modi, as dynamic as he has been, has yet to succeed or try hard enough. GIFT is, to some degree, an escape from what needs to be done, though an understandable escape, given that throughout the world old downtowns are degenerating as new suburbs sprout.
Under Modi, a new six-mile-long park and waterfront project, designed by Patel, is being constructed along the Sabarmati River that runs through Ahmedabad. But, for the most part, the chief minister has avoided the local politics of Ahmedabad and other Gujarati cities rather than grapple with them to effect change. Urban politicians in India are generally incorrigible on one hand, and weak on the other, as most of the power is held at the state level, so very little happens in the cities. Neither Modi nor very many other state leaders have truly engaged in consensus building at the municipal level to clean up the urban mess, though, at some point, India’s new urban elite may demand that real local politics, however messy and unsatisfactory, be engaged in—the true mark of freedom.
This is to say nothing of the informal communal cantons that have either sprung up or been strengthened under Modi’s rule, with the old walled city of Ahmedabad among the only areas where Hindus and Muslims, who compose 9 percent of the city’s population, can really mix. Otherwise, the most poignant scene I came across in more than two weeks of wandering around Ahmedabad was at the Sarkhej Roza, the fifteenth-century mosque and tomb complex dedicated to Sheikh Ahmed Khattu, the spiritual advisor to Ahmed Shah. Amidst the medieval domes and balconies overlooking a water tank, families picnicked, young couples whispered, children played ball, and prayer meetings were held. The architecture, with its elegant stucco and grillwork, blended Islamic and Hindu styles, a composite known as Indo-Saracenic. But at least until the park and waterfront project are completed, there is no such mixing of cultures in Ahmedabad today, for the crowd at the Sarkhej Roza was, obviously, exclusively Muslim.
To see more of Gujarat, for ten hours I traveled by bus and car from Ahmedabad south to the coast at Diu, at the southernmost point of Gujarat’s Kathiawar Peninsula, the site of Portuguese monuments that have particular relevance to the larger Indian story I wish to relate.
I passed through a never-ending series of hovels along broken roads, past creaking and dusty carts, shanties, and lean-tos made of burlap and rusted corrugated iron that define rural India. Though the Indian landscape, especially as seen in the pages of coffee table books, offers a richness of primary colors, the reality is often a dreary tableau of grays and browns. In many places, though, I found that the roads were paved, and running water and electricity were everywhere. As primitive as the scenes looked, I knew from journeys in poorer Indian states like Bihar and West Bengal that much progress had been made. Still, South Korea? No, not for a few decades at a very minimum. India could be a great regional power and pivot state, but it was not likely to reach the level of development of the East Asian tiger economies. “Modi’s very good at hype,” one journalist told me, “but he can’t completely deliver.”
Diu had been a key strategic base for Portugal’s Indian Ocean empire, captured from the Ottoman Turks in a decisive sea battle in 1509 by Francisco de Almeida, who had convinced the local Muslim governor to change sides and thus not come to the aid of his religious compatriots. It was this victory that further cemented Portugal’s claim to control navigation in these waters. The poet Camões celebrates such conquest and treachery in The Lusíads:
That Portuguese, they prophesy,
Raiding along the Cambay coast, will
Be to the Gujaratis such a specter
As haunted the Greeks in mighty Hector.…
The King of Cambay, for all his pride,
Will surrender rich Diu’s citadel,
In return for protecting his kingdom
From the all-conquering Mughal…16
The sea gently knocked at the ramparts of the Portuguese citadel, the colors of mustard and lead from centuries of wear. The citadel is a triumph of fortress architecture—with a long landing pier, double gateway, rock-cut moat, and double line of seven bastions, each named after a Christian saint. Weeds crept through the stone, wild pigs wandered about, and packs of young male Indians, impervious to the historical explanations in Hindi and Gujarati, loudly ambled along the stone works, seemingly unknowing of the significance of this immense curiosity, topped at its highest point by a lonely white cross. No guidebooks in any language were on sale, nor was there any entry fee or even a gatekeeper. The massive Portuguese churches here, with their colossal white Gothic facades, stood equally forlorn, their walls faded and leprous. You could actually see and hear the plaster falling at the close wing beats of pigeons. Inside these churches, after you had made your way past the tangle of garbage and overgrown white roses and oleanders, were cool, dark aromatic interiors conducive to prayer for the delivery of loved ones from the ravages of the sea. A few hundred years old, these dilapidated monuments are more like relics from antiquity, so divorced do they seem from t
he local environment.
Empires arise and fall. Only their ideas can remain, adapted to the needs of the people they once ruled. The Portuguese brought few ideas save for their Catholic religion, which sank little root among Hindus and Muslims, so these ruins are merely sad, and, after a manner, beautiful. By contrast, the British brought tangible development, ports and railways, that created the basis for a modern state. More importantly, they brought the framework for parliamentary democracy that Indians, who already possessed indigenous traditions of heterodoxy and pluralism, were able to fit successfully to their own needs.17 Indeed, the very Hindu pantheon, with its many gods rather than one, works toward the realization of competing truths that enable freedom. Thus, the British, their flaws notwithstanding, advanced an ideal of Indian greatness. And that greatness, as enlightened Indians will tell you, is impossible to complete without a moral component.
As the influence of an economically burgeoning India now seeps both westward and eastward, it can do so only as a force of communal coexistence made possible by being, as the cliché goes, the world’s largest democracy. In other words, India, despite its flashy economic growth, is nothing but another gravely troubled developing nation without a minimum of domestic harmony. Mercifully, the forces of Indian democracy have already survived more than sixty years of turmoil, attested to by the stability of coalition governments following the era of Congress Party rule. These forces appear sufficiently grounded to either reject a Modi at the national level or to neuter his worst impulses as he moves at some point from Gandhinagar to New Delhi. After all, the churches and bastions in Diu are ruins not because they represent an idea that failed, but because they represent no idea at all; whereas India has been an idea since Gandhi’s Salt March in 1930. Modi’s managerial genius will either be fitted to the service of that idea or he will stay where he is. Hindus elsewhere in India are less communal-minded than those in Gujarat, and that will be his dilemma. The coming together of Hindus and Muslims following the seaborne terrorist attack on a hotel and other sites in Mumbai in November 2008, originating from Pakistan, should have been a warning to him.
Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power Page 14