The Modern Janus

While Modi promotes a progressive vision for India, his true influence stems from a backward-looking ideology that fosters division and historical grievances.

IN ANCIENT ROME, among the many gods, there was one called Janus, who had two heads: one looking forward and the other looking backward.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the modern Janus. His forward-looking head speaks of a digital India, a $5 trillion economy, artificial intelligence, bullet trains, and space missions.

The other head reveres ancient India, portraying it as a golden age, with claims of ancient knowledge in head transplant surgery, genetic engineering, and aeroplanes—a belief propagated by the RSS, with which he is affiliated.

However, the truth is that Modi has always had only one head—the one looking backward. His forward-looking head and progressive image are merely a mask.

Modi joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) at an early age and served as an RSS pracharak for many years.

The ideology of the RSS can be summed up as: (1) glorifying ancient India as a golden age and (2) demonizing Muslims, portraying them as foreign infiltrators, terrorists, rapists, and looters.

A former RSS head (Sarsanghchalak), M.S. Golwalkar, who led from 1940 to 1973 and was affectionately called “Guruji” by followers, wrote two books, ‘We, or Our Nationhood Defined’ and ‘Bunch of Thoughts’, mandatory readings for RSS members, and thus almost certainly read by Modi. In these books, Golwalkar spews venom against Muslims.

Golwalkar was clear about the principal targets of his race-hatred. He wrote

”Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to shake off the despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening”.

The association of Hindutva with an explicitly anti-Muslim agenda was unambiguous avowed by Golwalkar. But ‘race’, fashionable though the term was when Golwakar wrote in the 1930s, especially in the context of Nazi ideology was not a totally accurate word for what he meant, since most of India’s Muslims were descended from Hindu ancestors, and therefore were of the same race as the Hindus for whom Golwalkar was speaking.

According to the proponents of Hindutva, despite that common descent, Muslims had cut themselves off from Hindu culture: they prayed in Arabic, rather than the Sanskrit born on Indian soil, turned to a foreign city (Mecca) as their holiest of holies, and owed allegiance to a holy book, and beliefs spawned by it, that had no roots in the sacred land of India.

Golwalkar’s answer was to seek the assimilation of Muslims and other minorities into the Hindu nationalist mainstream by forcing them to abandon these external allegiances. The Nazi notion of a volksgeist, a ‘race spirit’ to which everyone would have to conform, appealed strongly to Golwalkar, who was a great admirer of Hitler. To remain in India, Muslims would have to submit themselves to Hindus.

All this has evidently been drilled into Modi’s mind from a young age when he joined the RSS.

During his 10-year rule as Prime Minister, Modi did great damage to India. He created havoc, polarizing society on religious lines, and inciting hatred against Muslims to secure Hindu votes. He was a skilled dramatist, organizing events like Yoga Day and Swachhata Abhiyan (Cleanliness Drive), among others.

He gave the slogan “Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas” (Progress for All), while his actions suggested an intent to marginalize ‘ghuspetiya’ (infiltrator) Muslims, a term he used in a recent public speech, aligning with M.S. Golwalkar’s views in his book ‘A Bunch of Thoughts’ — that Muslims are not true Indians but foreigners.

He secured the 2019 parliamentary elections with the Balakot air strike on Pakistan, and by declaring “Humne unke ghar mein ghus ke maara hai” (We attacked Pakistanis in their home), which created an emotional surge favouring the BJP.

He attempted to replicate this effect by consecrating the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya in January this year, thinking it would generate a pro-Modi wave to sweep the 2024 elections, shifting the people’s focus from pressing issues like massive poverty, record unemployment, skyrocketing prices of food, fuel, and other essentials, and an appalling level of child malnourishment (every second child in India is malnourished, according to Global Hunger Index).

After becoming Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002, he was complicit in a massacre of Muslims in Gujarat, fitting with his RSS ideology.

Since becoming Prime Minister in 2014, religious polarization and communal hatred have increased exponentially in India, with numerous atrocities against the Muslim minority. State institutions and educational bodies were ‘saffronized,’ and history and science were distorted during his tenure, similar to the Nazi perversion of science.

Modi’s government has also attempted to rewrite historical narratives, casting the Mughal era as foreign rule and slavery, disregarding the prosperity of India under the Mughals, when it accounted for over 25% of the world’s wealth. Emperor Akbar, with his principle of ‘Sulh-e-Kul’ (equal respect for all religions), was the true Father of the Indian Nation.

Despite claims of economic growth, the reality is that while a few Indian billionaires have flourished, the poor have become poorer under Modi’s rule, and poverty, unemployment, child malnutrition, price rise etc have gone up exponentially.

Massive corruption has persisted, and the BJP has become known as the ‘washing machine’ for corrupt politicians seeking absolution by joining it.

India has had enough of Modi, and the time has now come for him to go. There is nothing in his head except hatred of Muslims. All he knows is skilfully stoking the communal fire and inciting religious hatred to get votes. But India is a country of great diversity, and so only religious amity can hold the country together, and take it on the path of progress. Divisive politics will only lead us to disaster.

It is time for Indian people to see through Modi’s deceptions, spectacles, and empty promises that have harmed the country. There is a saying, “You can fool some people all the time, and all the people for some time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Modi may have believed he could deceive Indians indefinitely.

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