Four reasons why PM Modi is the man of the moment for Indians abroad Those assigned to carry Prime Minister Narendra Modis baggage as he lands in New York this month wont be able to lighten his greatest burden - the expectations and sheer anticipation of not only a billion people he leaves in India, but the 4 million Indian Americans. There are many idioms and adjectives deployed to convey the significance of a moment: inflection point”, epochal,” critical juncture,” historic intersection,” paradigm shift”. But how does one articulate the meaning of a moment virtually unknown to three generations at home, and for those in the largest Indian diaspora abroad? Indians today idealise their greatest generation - every home has a story of an acquaintance, an aunt, a grandfather that gave of themselves to the cause of Indias Independence struggle. Independence lives on in memories and grainy films as a crucial historical moment. But that moment of greatness has escaped two generations of Indians hence. Today they venerate a pantheon of Gandhi, Patel, Bose, and Nehru holding them as the vaunted ideal, but have come to expect nothing of their contemporary leaders. A culture of low expectations begets exactly that, as to most Indians, the heady days of towering, heroic leaders has given way to inconsequential minnows nibbling and hoarding scraps. And it was this culture Indians began shedding as the exodus abroad began anew in the 1960s. So if the Modi moment is prone to hyperbole and tired metaphors, it is because the moment is ripe with emotions not ascribed to a political leader in over sixty years. When really did Indians actually believe that a leader could lead, take initiative, overcome challenges, and, indeed, elicit pride? Modi-mania” rings true in India, perhaps, but the rapturous welcome that will almost certainly buoy Mr Modi as he ascends the stage at Madison Square Garden on 28 September, is compelling in other ways. More than forty-thousand Indian Americans went through a ponderous online process clamoring for twenty-thousand tickets to hear the prime minister speak - a specially created website was seeing several hundred applications an hour at one point before it stopped taking applications. Never before has a foreign leader addressed a crowd the size and enthusiasm expected at New York. So what explains the rock star welcome from a crowd that will never likely punch a vote in his favour? Modi Myth: Joseph Campbell, the renowned mythologist famously posited the monomyth paradigm. A fixture on television in the 1960s and read widely by Indian immigrants of that era as he was avowedly affected by Puranic stories and Hindu philosophy, Campbell wrote of a protagonist that accepts a call for a special task and is forced to face arduous opposition. He then survives the opposition to win a boon that is brought back to the masses. Mr Modi conveniently fits that paradigm arising from a decidedly pedestrian pedigree, then surviving a decade of calumny of mythical proportions to go on to ascend the highest office in India. No one expects the dapper Modi to don a Karzai-esque cape when he swoops into Gotham City, but if Modi actually delivers on many of the promises of his campaign, be prepared for more mythmaking than just the Amar Chitra Kathas tracking Bal Narendras rise. Modinomics: Indian Americans wrestle with the guilt that they left India in search of a prosperity that eluded them at home. The India they left was clear in its socialist messaging: individual prosperity necessarily deprives another of limited resources. Resources were to be allocated, not created; economic structures militated against wealth creation. To that narrative, another already existed--renunciation. Capitalism was the converse not of socialism, but of the real aim in life of shedding the bonds of materialism and maya. The diaspora finds many ways to deal with the duality--continue earning while giving more to building temples, seeking spiritual solace and learning at sundry ashrams, churches and mosques. But the Modi archetype resolves the conflict. Modi is the renunciate who does not repudiate prosperity. Modi may be a sadhu in his personal life--no kanchan or kamini, though accepting some kirti--but he is a sadhu who preaches that wealth creation is good, as long as one is not enslaved by it and is able to lift all boats with it. He scraps the Planning Commission and speaks of decentralizing power and a states rights mantra that is more than familiar to Indian Americans. Modi is allowing Indian Americans to believe that investing in India is not only good business, but that it is a patriotic duty. The Indian Enlightenment: Schools in the U.S. teach that the Age of Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries ushered in a period of liberalism and rationality that was grounded in science. A slumbering India, Americans are taught, was hamstrung by a Hindu rate of growth”, caste system and idol worship seen in contrast to the rational, progressive themes underlying modern Western civilization. But Modi upends this accounting. He reclaims Sanskrit even as he privileges Hindi as his means of communication. His Hindi phraseology is infused with powerful Sanskrit terms: vistaar vaad, vikaas vaad, rajniti, vistrut dhrishti, and the like. As Rajiv Malhotra argues, Indic Civilization - through the Western study of Sanskrit scripture and literature - actually shaped the Western Enlightenment movements. And in making Sanskrit relevant again, Modi changes the discourse for the diaspora and implies that an Indian Enlightenment is simply a rediscovery of an Indic heritage - one free from superstition and casteism, but suffused with innovation, science and vikaas that is not in conflict with Indic religions. Even the Bhagavad Gita gifted to Prime Minister Abe in Japan and the Emperor changes in its symbolism from Modis hands. The book becomes not just a holy book for Hindus, but tantamount to gifting the Aphorisms of Confucius. Modis gift says that for Hindus, the Gita may be the song of God, but for all Indians, it is the song of their civilization. Calling out India: India is saddled by the revolting realities of terrible sanitation, pollution and filth in Indian streets. For Indian Americans growing comfortable in the comparatively sterile West, this one issue animates any discussion of a visit to India. In Modi, they see a leader that wont demur on the topic and offer tired justifications of why the nation must lead the world in outdoor defecation. Instead, even on arguably the most significant speech to date, on Indias Independence Day, Modi did not shy away from calling out the lack of sanitation, the crying shame of rape, and launched the Clean India campaign. It becomes clear then, that Modi does not appeal to Indians in America so viscerally because he speaks to them or curries their favor. It is simply that the India he seeks happens to resonate with their sensibilities. While the aspirations of Indian Americans, and their stories of emigration may be irrelevant to 800 million Indian voters, the election of Modi fuels imagination because those voters actually expect their leader to deliver. Hope,” change,” dreams” are good for slogans, but as Modis American counterpart knows too well, they can easily become an albatross. A massive electoral mandate carries a burden just as large and unforgiving. Cynicism has no expiration date--there will be much time for that. But one must not be accused of hagiographic excess to hope that perhaps, just perhaps, like 20,000 cheering fans at Madison Square Garden, Modi is the man for this moment. Dr Aseem Shukla is a co-founder and member of the Board of the Hindu American Foundation, and an Associate Professor Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. The views expressed here are his own.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 19:19:41 +0000
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