Bharat Rising: Dharma, Democracy, Diplomacy

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Bharat, that is, India, had a false start in 1947. In the ensuing decade, it took a wrong, anti-West turn and found itself stuck in a morose Leftist world order wherein overarching red tapism and stifling statism ruled the roost. The ideological obsession of the political class, seeped in Nehruism, hindered its ability to take a pragmatic nation- first approach, thus putting the country not just on the wrong side of history but also vastly compromising its growth story-the Left-'liberals' mischievously called it the 'Hindu rate of growth'. It took a balance of payments crisis in 1990-91 to bring the country out of its socialist stupor.

If Bharat gained political independence in 1947, it became economically free only in 1991 under the first non-Gandhi-led Congress government to run the full term. P.V. Narasimha Rao, in a jugalbandi with Manmohan Singh, initiated the country's liberalization process. It was this decision to let the genies of the market come out of the statist bottle that laid the foundation of the global economic power that Bharat is today. Building on this foundation, the country has today displaced the United Kingdom (UK) to become the fifth-largest economy in the world and is all set to take the third slot in the elite list by the end of the decade after the United States (US) and China.

The year 2014 saw another seismic revolution when Narendra Modi became the first prime minister with an absolute majority in over three decades. Modi isn't the first prime minister to hail from the non-Lutyens' zone.

In Bharat Rising: Dharma, Democracy, Diplomacy, noted journalist Utpal Kumar writes passionately and provocatively about the shifts-both seismic and subtle in India's statecraft since Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office. Across twelve lively chapters on matters of culture, domestic politics, and international relations, this book builds a case to locate 'the rise of Bharat' as a consequence of the Modi government's revival of India's civilizational ethos.

The Modi government's stellar record of proactive and farsighted governance on issues such as development, enhancement of economic and socio-cultural rights, and strategic autonomy stems from a 'dharmic' worldview that was sorely missing in the post-Independence period.

Even as the author delves deeply into various aspects of Indian politics and diplomacy, Bharat Rising finds its stride in its critique of the Left-'liberal' mores that led to the erosion of India's civilizational values after Independence and left in its wake a meek and slavish mentality in its people. The author irrefutably asserts that this was a mentality that many previous regimes-beholden to 'Nehruvian secularism' sought to sustain in order to preserve colonial notions of power.

The author writes from the 21st century, a time in which the 'teachings' of the Left-'liberal' elite and the different shades of socialism that Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru espoused have proven to be ill-fitting with the contours of the pluralistic nature of Indian life. Yet, this was not the case back in the day.

In 2017, Lord Meghnad Desai, while interacting with this writer in the wake of the release of his latest book, Politic Shock: Trump, Modi, Brexit and the Prospect for Liberal Democracy, recalled a decade-old incident. The Gujarat assembly election results were just out in December 2007, and the BJP led by the then Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, had swept the assembly elections for the second time in a row. The mood among Left-'liberal' commentators in the TV studio was sombre, to say the least. Amid all this, Desai was asked to analyse Modi's electoral victory. Pat came the reply: 'Modi is the next leader of the BJP'

Desai's statement evoked 'surprise and some disgust' among his copanellists, to the extent that noted social scientist Ashis Nandy came up with a terse one-liner: 'Over my dead body!' To this, Desai recalled saying: 'Ashis, you and I are young enough and it will happen in our lifetime.

Desai was vindicated within seven years as Modi romped to power at the Centre with an absolute majority-a first in three decades. In Nandy's defence, however, it can be said that he was not alone in the Left-liberal ecosystem to remain stubbornly oblivious to the ground slipping beneath its feet till it actually happened in May 2014. Though there were enough indications suggesting that the growing TsuNaMo in western India was threatening to engulf the entire nation, for this class, the arrival of Modi in Lutyens' Delhi was a Black Swan event, which, in the words of author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is 'nearly impossible to predict', yet after it happens, 'we always try to rationalise' it.

It's understandable why Modi's emphatic breaching of the gates of Raisina Hills has befuddled the Left-'liberal' class. Till then, whosoever came to power at the Centre, it was invariably the Lutyens' elite that ran the system. Contrary to what is popularly believed, this power elite first came to power not in 1947 but in 1928, when Motilal Nehru's term as Congress president was about to end. The buzz was that either Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel or Subhas Chandra Bose would take over the party's reins. But then Jawaharlal Nehru's mother, Swarup Rani, intervened and reached out to Mahatma Gandhi. She wanted to see 'a king passing on the sceptre of the throne to his logical successor Jawaharlal Nehru. The Mahatma, by acceding to a mother's heart, unwittingly set in motion the foundation of a dynasty that was to rule India post-Independence.

So, what exactly is Lutyens' Delhi? It's no doubt a geographical entity denoting the tree-lined avenues in the vicinity of Rashtrapati Bhavan and the Parliament. But post- Independence, it has become primarily a metaphor for the country's power elite. This power elite is a closely knit group living in Raisina Hill and nearby posh localities of Jor Bagh, Chanakyapuri, Vasant Vihar, and others, where entries are fiercely monitored and outsiders are not welcomed. This class has much in common with a similar class of people in other countries-every national capital has its own power elite- but is largely cut off and distanced from people outside the Lutyens' boundaries.