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Business News/ Opinion / Online-views/  Narendra Modi moves the discourse to the right of Rights
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Narendra Modi moves the discourse to the right of Rights

The PM in the course of his I-Day speech deftly moved the political discourse further to the Right by stressing on individual responsibilities over entitlements

Prime Minister Narendra Modi doffed his mighty, wind-swirled turban to the spirit of an American president. Photo: PTIPremium
Prime Minister Narendra Modi doffed his mighty, wind-swirled turban to the spirit of an American president. Photo: PTI

He didn’t say so, but on India’s Independence Day 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi doffed his mighty, wind-swirled turban to the spirit of an American president.

In 1961, in his inaugural address to the nation, the young John F. Kennedy proclaimed, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

For a Democrat, this was a brave thing to say to the party’s supporters on the Left, but Kennedy was speaking in exceptional times, in the context of defending freedoms in the midst of the Cold War.

In the spirit of that comment, Modi in the course of an hour-long speech deftly moved India’s political discourse further to the Right by stressing individual responsibilities (he meant duties) over the rights and entitlements that were stressed by his centre-Left predecessors Manmohan Singh and Congress party president Sonia Gandhi.

Couples, Modi said, should stop committing female foeticide—and “liberate" their “polluted and tainted minds".

Parents should teach their sons to respect women, so that the scourge of rape could be attacked.

Parents of men and women who have become Maoist insurgents or taken to other forms of terrorism must know what they are up to. Every parent must take this responsibility.

Young men and women who have taken up guns should drop their weapons for the plough and think, “How green, how beautiful and how beneficial this earth."

“Brothers and sisters," Modi said, “can someone please tell me as to whether he or she has ever introspected in the evening after a full day’s work as to whether his or her acts have helped the poor of the country or not, whether his or her actions have resulted in safeguarding the interest of the country or not, whether the actions have been directed in country’s welfare or not?"

This is Kennedy’s “Ask not" speech—fleshed out, updated, Indianized.

Modi isn’t and won’t be the first government leader to try and shift greater responsibility from government to individuals and society. Such attempts fit in with the notion of small government if, for instance, parents maintained a close watch on the kind of company their children kept and told the police if they suspected meddlesome radicals at work.

But whether such a task of securing and building a nation can be commanded from above is something that is unclear. In the experience of other democracies that have sought and encouraged similar solutions, such initiatives are best initiated by communities.

Across the world, the radicalization of Muslim youth is now a reality that preoccupies policymakers, government ministers, religious figures, community leaders, police and intelligence agencies.

For years, emissaries from India, justifiably proud of the nation’s multicultural ethos, went around telling the world how not a single Indian was found among the pan-Islamist radicals found in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban in 2001.

Many friends of India in the West were impressed. After all, they, too, lived in liberal democracies, so how come radicals were springing up all over their countries, and not in India?

Now no one is sure—a number of Indian youths, it turns out, have joined the ranks of Islamist fighters in Syria and Iraq.

The inconvenient truth for liberal and secular democracies is that youths are not only radicalized by hate preachers and terror outfits (say, from Pakistan), but they also seek out “solutions" because they are alienated within their own society. This has been acknowledged by Western lawkeeping agencies.

“We will only defeat it (the problem of radicalization) if we have a motivating idea that is better than theirs," said former Scotland Yard chief Ian Blair back in 2007. Since then, concerted and coordinated efforts by European nations have led to deeper engagement with communities; better intelligence gathering at the community-level; Imams and other community leaders being invited to help device policy; attempts at cutting off foreign funding of mosques; stepped up surveillance by an increase in the number of street cameras (these are cameras that are maintained and actually work).

The most important task, in a country like India, is to make a dent in poverty to tackle both Maoism and Islamic radicalization. According to the 2011 Census, Muslims number over 138 million, making up 13.4% of India’s population. Muslims are in a majority in Lakshadweep and Jammu and Kashmir and their percentage is sizeable in Assam (30.9%), Bengal (25.2%), Kerala (24.7%), Uttar Pradesh (18.5%) and Bihar (16.5%).

Yet Muslims, as a religious group, are stuck at the bottom of India’s social and economic pile, just as they are in the urban ghettoes of Europe. This is true also of tribal youth, who, dispossessed from their lands and livelihood, have a ready excuse to join Maoists.

Modi, known for his efficient execution of policies, should back up his Independence Day call by ordering a study of Muslim and tribal poverty in India, updating what is known as the Sachar Report—a sobering study on the social, economic and educational status of Indian Muslims dating back to 2006.

As Kennedy said, also in that inaugural address, “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."

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Published: 21 Aug 2014, 11:28 PM IST
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