The Indian National Congress can take credit for the most famous slogan of Indian democracy, ‘India is Indira’. But the party also has the distinction of creating the most dud slogan that handed victory to the other side. That’s right, the last campaign strapline of ‘Chowkidar Chor Hai’ –Watchman is the Thief—only enhanced Brand Modi.
Any political opposition to the Prime Minister on the campaign of corruption, even after eight years of full-spectrum political domination by the Bharatiya Janata Party, is likely to turn into a fool’s errand. Even if, as has just happened, that no less than the Vice-President of the country has turned the screws on the ruling party. Evidently, the Vice-President’s otherwise explosive comments including on corruption have landed as a big damp squib.
The clear lack of heat despite shocking exposés, both on the Adani-gate and the Vice-President’s fulminations last week begs an explanation. It is unclear whether the current silence is borne out of affirmation and consent or authority and quiet dissent.
Strength or authority? The Adani-gate test
Since the silence is confusing, it carries the greatest potential to shift political moods. The next national election will be staked precisely on the Indian voter’s ability to distinguish strength from authority, as the generalised silence indicates loudly. Adani-gate will test the limits of authority rather than becoming a single scandal of corruption.
The relative coolness over the heated details of Adani-gate has everything to do with the political fate of corruption in India, at least in national as opposed to regional consciousness. Corruption is playing a pivotal role in deciding the winner of the ongoing Karnataka elections. But at the national level, the BJP will likely keep it as its own calling card. Dubbed the ‘big con’ thus far, Adani-gate has not changed the domestic political mood. To be sure, this is not because the incalculable sums of money somehow add up.
This is because the political watermark of corruption has everything to do with the unfolding of power over time in Indian democracy. Simply put, the BJP is still considered new in relation to the power of the entrenched, i.e. India’s oldest party, the Indian National Congress.
Power and corruption may be bedfellows, but their relationship is deemed politically toxic only after the passage of a long marriage. Adani-gate is unlikely to become political over corruption charges. It will only become a hot-ticket item if it is associated with overpowering authority. History here helps clarify the fickle play of corruption and authority in Indian politics.
Also read: Hindenburg showed skin in the game with report on Adani. It can’t be dismissed as ‘suspect’
Corruption and power
Modi’s supporters would not like their leader to be compared with Jawaharlal Nehru. But the instructive example of the political fate of corruption comes from Nehru himself. The onslaught of corruption charges in his era against then Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Kairon put Nehru under considerable pressure. This scandal occasioned the first demand for an ombudsman, or judicial oversight over political power.
In the early and heady days of power, even the loudest charges of corruption are if not forgiven then ignored. Although Kairon was cleared of the charges on the eve of his assassination, there was no political punishment by the electorate. In short, the business of a relatively new government trumped moral turpitude. By contrast, after six decades of power, fantastical sums had only to be uttered against the last United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government for ever new harsh punishment by the electorate. The Congress had run out of time for any doubts or forgiveness. Its long history of power made it impossible to counter any real or fictive corruption charges. The call of anti-corruption thus paved the way for Hindutva to be installed in 2014.
Little wonder, then, that the prime minister is now routinely reminding people of his humble origins while describing corruption as a trait of the old order. In so doing, Modi is speaking to and shoring up his large gallery of converted and committed voters. Casting himself again as the new force in an old order helps reflect corruption as an outcome of a decadent passage of time. Modi’s appeal has rested on his rite of passage from modest origins to India’s strongman.
It is this fine line between strength and authority that Adani-gate is testing. While strength is a signal virtue, authority is an ace political vice. This is precisely because authority is associated with weakness and will be the touchstone of the next national electoral campaign.
Also Read: BJP is turning Indians indifferent and sceptical toward corruption
Authority or Corruption?
Authority is no strength: whether it is the stalling of a joint parliamentary committee probe or, more to the point, the slapping of civil or criminal suits – corruption, defamation, and what have you – against opposition party leaders. Lawsuits might not make a martyr out of a Rahul Gandhi or an Arvind Kejriwal, yet. What it leaves behind is the distinct stench of authority. The BJP’s spin doctors have already started to confuse strength with authority. In doing so, they are beginning to make Brand Modi vulnerable.
Adani-gate may not turn the floating voter, let alone change the mind of a die-hard follower of Brand Modi. The only way this financial scandal will become political is through the excess of strongman tactics that are becoming all too visible. The ball is very much in Modi’s court.
Chasing political opponents out of the arena, however, makes even the humblest occupier of the top job a tormentor, if not a bully. Strongmen might be loved, but authoritarians are only feared. As modern politics teaches us, only kings and monarchies can rule with fear and authority. Democracies and even their strongest leaders need and live on the love of the people.
No one scandal, least of all a charge of corruption, is likely to rock the BJP’s electoral arithmetic: Adani or no Adani. Modi’s hard-won persona of sacrifice remains an asset. The threat of seeing not one but two or more popular leaders behind bars– whether it is Arvind Kejriwal or Rahul Gandhi – however can and will shift moods and votes. It can also turn a loved leader into a feared despot.
The real political question in India today is thus authority, and political leaders must speak this essential truth today. It will break the silence and determine political debate.
If corruption is a political vice of the long-term variety, then authority lives on a short fuse in Indian democracy. Indira Gandhi learnt that lesson all too quickly and turned around in less than five years, and in 1980 forged the only comeback to date at the top level. The BJP may have time on its side, but it will ignore the volatile, if silent, emotions of the current image wars at its own peril.
It is not theft but the length and strength of the lathi (stick) of the chowkidar that is of the essence now.
Shruti Kapila is Professor of history and politics at the University of Cambridge. She tweets @shrutikapila. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
Source: The Print
