The Outsider

 The Outsider

An outsider in a private club. This insight has hit the nail right in the

 middle of the head !

Tavleen <http://www.indianexpress.com/columnist/tavleensingh/>  

Singh : Sun Aug 18 2013


Had Rahul Gandhi made the speech Narendra Modi did last week, he

 would have been hailed as India's shining white hope. Had Prime 

Minister Manmohan Singh made this speech from the Red Fort, instead

 of the dreary one he did, it may have swept away the sense of gloom 

and doom that permeates the economy. Had any other chief minister 

made the speech, us political pundit types would have sat up and taken 

notice. But, since it was Modi, he had to be reviled. What he said was 

unexceptionable. So he had to be attacked on other grounds. Why did 

he need to steal the Prime Minister's show by making this speech on 

Independence Day? The truth is that August 15 lost its magic long ago

 and has been reduced to ceremonial tokenism of the worst kind. We 

need political leaders to make meaningful speeches on this day, but that

 this idea should have occurred to Modi is intolerable.

So much so that even his former mentor, the tireless Shri Lal Krishna 

Advani, made an immediate veiled attack on him by saying that Independence

 Day should be an occasion when political leaders should refrain from

criticising each other. Why? Shri Advani then trotted off to Rashtrapati
Bhavan and was seen cozying up to Sonia Gandhi at the President's 

Independence Day tea party. I found this particular detail interesting 

because of my conviction that the reason why us denizens of Lutyens's

Delhi hate Modi so much is because he is a rank outsider. He comes from 

the wrong class and caste. He speaks little English. He dares to criticise 

the Dynasty we revere. And he exhibits a marked disdain for socialism

 and secularism. These two ideas are sacrosanct for those who have 

privileged access to that most exclusive of Indian private clubs:

 Lutyens's Delhi.

Not everyone who reaches Parliament or high levels of political power

has automatic access to the club. You have to come from an important 

political family and you have to have attended the right kind of English-

medium school. The heirs of important political leaders have easy access 

for these reasons. Not every bureaucrat has access but those of the right

 class are life members. High-flying hacks are always welcome and quickly

 learn the rules. You have to express political opinions that are 'secular' 

and 'liberal' and you have to make sure that you do not say bad things 

about the Dynasty. This is considered especially bad form. This is why,

despite the obviously deleterious effects of dynastic democracy, you see 

few stories on the subject in the media.

Once you become a member of the club you find yourself invited on 

almost a daily basis to exclusive dinner parties in grand houses and fine 

hotels. At these events you will see politicians of different parties greet

 each other like old school friends, despite what they may have said to 

each other publicly that day in Parliament. And it is at these events that 

you will see famous media personalities included in conversations that are

 always 'off the record'. If you break the rules, as I love to, then you risk 

being abused on national television by Gandhi family devotees like the

 unpleasantly loudmouthed Mani Shankar Aiyar. But, that is another story 

and I am digressing.

In a column of this size, it is really possible to make only one point and 

the one I want to make this week is that it is not what Modi says that gets

him into trouble. It is not what he did in 2002 that evokes such shivers of

 revulsion in Lutyens's Delhi. Rajiv Gandhi remained totally acceptable after 

1984. It is who Narendra Modi is that is the problem.

He represents an India that has so far been carefully kept outside the c

losed doors of the Lutyens's Delhi club. A rough, angry, passionate new India 

that does not recognise private clubs or their rules and that threatens to tear 

down the walls that conceal the colonised elite, bred by
the British Raj, that continues to control all the levers of political power

 in India.

Incredible though this may sound, the entire machinery of the Congress

party is currently geared to finding ways of keeping Modi out of national 

politics. This endeavour has the complicit support of senior BJP leaders 

and this is why you now so often hear the Congress party's spokesmen 

publicly praise Mr Advani as a 'moderate' when till just the other day he 

was considered the man responsible for demolishing the Babri Masjid. 

The truth is that everyone, perhaps even Mr Advani himself, knows 

that a BJP campaign led yet again by him will almost certainly keep 

this party in opposition for another five years. But, at least this would

 prevent Narendra Modi from smashing down the gates of Lutyens's Delhi.