Since killing the idea of India wasn't bad enough, the PM-select has taken away my favourite thing. It is an element inferred, like dark matter. As the not-so-subtle teleological principle that permeates the chronicles from Discworld, it let me know that things work out, though not always as we foresee. The only thing us mere mortals need to know about narritivum is that it makes the million to one chance come through.
Yesterday's government has been accused of many things and it appears not even a million to one chance can save it. But its greatest fault, the one most germane to its impending loss, is the failure to recognise the power of a story well told. That is the essence of propaganda. And unlike its country cousin libel, truth is no defence against it.
Dear leader's manifest destiny has come to fruition. The money, hate, cadre, advertisements and salivating NRI techies are each a condition of possibility for the coming Utopia. None however, are a Necessary Condition. Mr. Modi recognises the importance of a story, and how beginnings determine ends. Terryda told me that narrative force is far more powerful than logic. It is here that the Man of Steel covered all his bases. He is both the return to a glorious past as well as the one to take us marching to modernity. He is the authoritarian centre as well as the federalist. He is the vegetarian butcher, the abstinent symbol of virility. In a million to one chance, he is both the million and the one.
Till recently, I thought Narritivum would save us. That when push comes to cliff we are not a people who had decency and open-ness foisted on us by the euro-centric generation of leaders responsible for the constitution. That in some deep part of us we are a decent society. And it is likely that we are.
That is why Mr Modi scares so many of us (most of 'us' are not muslims or christians). Not for what he will do as the head of government, but what he brings out in the people who elected him. Mr. Modi's Idea of India is not new. It is part of the earliest debates about who we are as a people. It is the worst of us - selfish, conservative, materialist and so so many things. An open society is a fragile thing and Mr. Modi's story has shattered it. Like the bile of a boozer long suppressed, the worst of it is on its way.
I hope I am wrong. That enough people still know what this country is and protect it. Or failing that, the next five years are the expectorant our diseased collective consciousness needs.
Yesterday's government has been accused of many things and it appears not even a million to one chance can save it. But its greatest fault, the one most germane to its impending loss, is the failure to recognise the power of a story well told. That is the essence of propaganda. And unlike its country cousin libel, truth is no defence against it.
Dear leader's manifest destiny has come to fruition. The money, hate, cadre, advertisements and salivating NRI techies are each a condition of possibility for the coming Utopia. None however, are a Necessary Condition. Mr. Modi recognises the importance of a story, and how beginnings determine ends. Terryda told me that narrative force is far more powerful than logic. It is here that the Man of Steel covered all his bases. He is both the return to a glorious past as well as the one to take us marching to modernity. He is the authoritarian centre as well as the federalist. He is the vegetarian butcher, the abstinent symbol of virility. In a million to one chance, he is both the million and the one.
Till recently, I thought Narritivum would save us. That when push comes to cliff we are not a people who had decency and open-ness foisted on us by the euro-centric generation of leaders responsible for the constitution. That in some deep part of us we are a decent society. And it is likely that we are.
That is why Mr Modi scares so many of us (most of 'us' are not muslims or christians). Not for what he will do as the head of government, but what he brings out in the people who elected him. Mr. Modi's Idea of India is not new. It is part of the earliest debates about who we are as a people. It is the worst of us - selfish, conservative, materialist and so so many things. An open society is a fragile thing and Mr. Modi's story has shattered it. Like the bile of a boozer long suppressed, the worst of it is on its way.
I hope I am wrong. That enough people still know what this country is and protect it. Or failing that, the next five years are the expectorant our diseased collective consciousness needs.
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