Two things I have ‘liked’ about the Prime Minister over the last 12 years

As someone who prefers India as a pluralist and secular society, I have my problems with this government, as many editions of this column will have shown over the years. This is based on a difference rooted in ideology and principles.

I think, like many others, that Hindutva is problematic and an unnatural imposition on this country. Of its achievements, the list of things to dislike and disagree with is long.

If asked to pick out at least a couple of things that I ‘like’ about what this dispensation has done, I would say that this prime minister is full-throated in his assault on minorities, unlike his BJP predecessor.

A second thing I ‘like’ is that, because of this, he has produced a devoted following that is satisfied with his actions.

These might seem like petty concessions — perhaps something else ought to be pointed out — but it is not easy. When one is assessing a saga that is currently in its 12th year, the impact of the entirety of it is hard to escape. When one finds a movie unwatchable, there is no point in then saying, ‘Well, it was unwatchable, but the hero’s costume changes were good’. It gets only a star-and-a-half from this reviewer, and that too with reluctance.

But clearly there is another side to this: the opinion of those people who think that the movie is terrific. This column is about them.

This is not an insignificant part of the population, and for this reason, it is an interesting one to look at. No matter what else he does, so long as the focus on minorities remains — through laws of discrimination, policies of exclusion and rhetoric of loathing — this following is not discontented. What I wanted to do today was to try and write about this phenomenon, which I believe to be real because the evidence is all around us.

Events of just these past few weeks provide us with ample material to examine. Take the Goods and Services Tax. When it was passed almost a decade ago, we were told it was a next-generation reform that would turbo-charge India’s economy. The government’s experts lined up on television to say, without explaining how, that it would add 2 per cent to the GDP. This turned out not to be the case.

The Opposition complained that it was too complicated for businesses, too onerous a burden on the poor (because indirect taxes hit them disproportionately) and too unfair to the states (because they no longer controlled the revenues). All of these complaints were valid, because they were true.

This week, after tweaking the rates, we are once again being told that this is a next-generation reform — because the original was flawed. Why it took the better part of a decade to realise this is a question one will ask only if one is not from the cohort of devoted supporters. For those supporters, that 2017 GST was great and this 2025 one is also terrific.

The morning’s newspaper carries the headline: ‘Trump makes U-turn on India, calls PM Modi “a great friend” a day after “lost to darkest China” swipe'. Has he undone his 50 per cent tariffs? No. Has his administration changed its policy or even its language on punishing India for buying Russian oil? No. Trump’s commerce secretary on the same day offered public comments resulting in this headline in the same newspaper: ‘India will say sorry and make a deal in two months: Lutnick’.

Where is Trump’s u-turn? It is in the minds of the believers. A third headline from today: ‘Amid US-India tariff row, PM Modi not to address UNGA in New York later this month’. The problem continues. But if we have convinced ourselves that we have triumphed, then why should the facts matter?

For five years, since the opening months of 2020, this nation has been told to view China as the enemy. The devotees were told to delete Chinese apps and to throw away their televisions. They were fed theories of how we would partner with America to ‘fix’ China. ‘Geo-strategic’-wallahs in think tanks aligned with the government wrote tracts in praise of this seismic shift, bringing us in alignment with the West.

Now, as of a few day ago, this sentiment has not only stopped, it seems to have been reversed. Now China is our ally. With iChina by our side, we will erase US dominance. Do the Chinese see us differently now than in 2020 or before? Of course not. They do not change how they think with such suppleness as this government can get its backers to do. It is we who are realigning our perspectives to the circumstances. It’s our ‘Look East Look West Look East etc’ policy. It makes perfect sense.

As I said, there are not many things to be liked about what has been done over the last dozen years. The damage is real and it will remain with us for decades.

But it is difficult not to appreciate the skill and magnetism of the Pied Piper leading his followers to future glory, ignoring the debris of the present all around them.

Views are personal. Read more of Aakar Patel's writing here