Liberal commentators, journalists, and insular intellectuals from various fields often claim that there is a fundamental difference between Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Narendra Modi, the two BJP Prime Ministers of India. It would be disingenuous to claim that there are no differences between the two individuals. In biological terms, cloning through the duplication of a genotype (genetic code) is possible, but environmental differences can still produce variations in phenotype, including physical traits and lifespan. Similarly, political cloning in terms of ideology, policies, and political projects is possible, but two leaders operating in different historical periods will inevitably behave differently in public life and in the office of Prime Minister. This is no different in the case of Vajpayee and Modi. The two leaders differ in their political and ideological evolution, grooming, political ethos, education, experience, and approaches to political power.
The so-called liberals celebrate Mr Vajpayee as a statesman, an excellent orator, and a consensus-builder, while portraying Mr Modi as a decisive organiser, a moderniser, and a strong leader. Liberal commentators such as Sudheendra Kulkarni have claimed that there is “no similarity” between Vajpayee’s and Modi’s BJP. Even Congress leader Sonia Gandhi argued that “Vajpayee had great respect for parliamentary procedure,” whereas the Modi regime lacks an “accommodative spirit.” In her opinion piece, “The Real Difference Between Modi And Vajpayee” (The Citizen, 12 February 2015), journalist Seema Mustafa describes Mr Vajpayee as an “intellectual” and a “democrat,” while characterising Mr Modi as “authoritarian.” Such characterisations, however, can provide political oxygen to Hindutva in various ways. These commentaries are fundamentally insular and contribute to the cultivation of personality cults in politics, which are detrimental to democratic politics and the possibility of transformative change.
In politics, differences and similarities in leadership style and approach are natural and normal. They matter only insofar as they affect whether politics advances the interests of the people. This is the crux of democratic politics. Did the differences and similarities between Vajpayee and Modi as Prime Ministers make a fundamental difference to the people of India? The answer is emphatically no.
Both Vajpayee and Modi have followed broadly similar political, ideological, and policy trajectories that, in my view, have undermined economic development, social progress, religious harmony, and India’s organic multiculturalism. The social orientation, cultural ethos, ideological foundations, and political approaches of both BJP leaders were shaped by the RSS. Both subscribed to Eurocentric ethno-nationalist narratives in pursuit of an exclusionary “Hindu Rashtra,” a project fundamentally at odds with India’s social ethos and constitutional values. Both have contributed to the militarisation of political consciousness in the pursuit of Hindutva politics. They represent two different and dynamic faces of Hindutva fascism, which is contributing to India’s present crisis.
There is no fundamental difference between Mr Vajpayee’s “Shining India” campaign and Mr Modi’s successive campaigns, from “Acche Din” to “Viksit Bharat.” Both sets of campaigns, I argue, have sought to project an optimistic national narrative while obscuring the failures of Hindutva politics to transform India’s social, economic, cultural, and political conditions. Millions of people remain marginalised and subjected to various forms of exploitation and inequality.
Both Mr Vajpayee and Mr Modi have followed in the footsteps of the Congress Party in pursuing neoliberal economic policies—liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation. These policies have deepened India’s economic inequalities and contributed to an agrarian crisis that has devastated lives and livelihoods in rural India. Both leaders have pursued economic policies that have deepened crony capitalism, further marginalising working people. Both have contributed to the centralisation of decision-making in pursuit of their political agendas. In this sense, the two leaders are different sides of the same ideological coin—a currency that, I argue, has little value for the unity, integrity, and social progress of India and its people.
Both leaders pursued Hindutva politics alongside the requirements of crony capitalism. Both also accommodated Zionism and American imperial power in different ways. One did not directly challenge the American war in Iraq, while the other has lacked the political courage to challenge American policy towards Iran. Their foreign policies have broadly accommodated American strategic interests and Israel, although their styles and circumstances have differed. Mr Vajpayee and Mr Modi have therefore followed similar foreign-policy trajectories: one was more subtle and restrained in style, while the other has been more openly assertive in projecting an image of decisiveness.
There are, of course, important differences between Vajpayee and Modi in personality, political style, rhetoric, institutional conduct, and historical circumstances. But these differences do not fundamentally alter the ideological and political trajectories of the two leaders. In the larger political canvas of India, such individual differences matter less than the material consequences of their political and economic choices for working people. Mr Vajpayee helped create political conditions in which the rise of Mr Modi became possible. Both leaders have pursued Hindutva ideology, each in his own way and within the circumstances of his time.
Hindutva as a political project works, in my view, towards a crony-capitalist India that is compatible with broader Zionist and imperialist political and economic projects globally. Defeating Hindutva politics and its ideological apparatus is therefore central to reviving an idea of India that works for its people. It is the politics and policies of everyday empowerment and emancipation that can shape the India of the twenty-first century.
Hindutva ideology, its politics, and its political leadership are not fit for this purpose. The defeat of Hindutva is the first step towards reviving an India committed to peace, progress, prosperity, equality, and democratic emancipation.
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*Academic based in UK
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