Grand Tamasha: How Modi’s term as Gujarat CM shaped his tenure at Centre
Jaffrelot relates some of the political trends we see in national politics today to homegrown strategies Modi implemented in Gujarat more than two decades ago
Gujarat Under Modi: Laboratory of Today’s India is a new book by scholar Christophe Jaffrelot, but one that has an old backstory. It is the definitive account of Narendra Modi’s tenure as chief minister of the state of Gujarat. And it helps place into context the changes we’ve seen in national politics, economic policy, and society over the past 10 years under Prime Minister Modi. It is a book that the author started researching 20 years ago and is finally out in the world.
Jaffrelot, the Avantha Chair and Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King’s India Institute, joined host Milan Vaishnav to expound on the book on last week’s episode of “Grand Tamasha” — a weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Jaffrelot relates some of the political trends we see in national politics today to homegrown strategies Modi implemented in Gujarat more than two decades ago. “The politics of Modi [in Gujarat] was divisive, not only in terms of religion, but also in terms of social groups. Some groups were deliberately supported–the middle class, the urban middle class, the upper caste urban middle class plus what [Modi] calls the “neo-middle class”, or the emerging middle class,” he said. These favoured groups include OBCs who came from the village, joined the suburbs, and started new jobs there. “They will definitely shift from Congress to the BJP when they migrate from the village to the city,” the author said.
Groups that were left out of Modi’s coalition were “clearly Muslims, minorities at large, but also Dalits, Adivasis, and the dissenters. What we see very soon, very quickly is a repression of NGOs and of the media…and intellectuals at large, including those who are working in state universities because most of the universities are captured…and the vice-chancellors are fellow travellers”.
However, not all of Modi’s principles of governance as Gujarat chief minister apply equally to his tenure as prime minister. Jaffrelot sketched out a handful of important differences.
Before 2013, the analyst argued, Modi did not project himself as an OBC person. “He started to do it when he knew that he would have to conquer the Hindi belt, where he would have to speak to the Biharis and speak to the voters of Uttar Pradesh. Therefore, he started to relate to this identity, and to narrate the chaiwala legend,” he explained.
Second, as prime minister, Modi “was in a position to implement a kind of social welfare policy that was very personalised, so he could give gas cylinders with his photograph on them to the poor”.
Third, Jaffrelot pointed to the role of “Sanskritisation”: “The way he appears now is the high priest of Hinduism is another big difference…he did not play that role as chief minister. Now he can appear in Ayodhya where he inaugurates the Ram temple…and Sanskritisation remains a very important factor for bringing Dalits on the BJP side through the RSS itself.”
Last but not the least, according to Jaffrelot, is the focus on non-dominant jatis (castes). “When you look at the Dalit candidates the BJP nominates, they do not give tickets to dominant Dalit jatis–Jatavs (in Uttar Pradesh) or Mahars (in Maharashtra),” he argued. “They promote non-dominant Dalit jatis who have not benefited from reservation as much as the dominant Dalit jatis and who resent the fact that these dominant jatis have cornered reservations.”