“To win him over, we must emphasize Modi’s personal importance in the country, and in the world, and how important it is for him to change tack and lead a united country instead of an army of ‘fringe elements’. Modi will leave his footprints on the sands of time only if he grasps this opportunity to unite instead of divide. Incidentally, this is what he himself had set out to do initially. All armchair intellectuals, secular liberals, urban Naxals, pseudo-secularists and minorities will welcome his change of heart, if it occurs. Perhaps the RSS Sarsangchalak will also come out openly and renew his advice to good Hindus not to go searching for Shivalingas in every mosque in the country. And that would really cap our efforts.”

And Pity Sultan Mahmud On His Throne — so wrote the great Persian poet, Omar Khayyam, in his Rubaiyat. It was the recurrence in my fading memory of that line in verse 10 of his epic that made me think. I have been mostly critical of my PM and I tried to figure out why. My world of friends today are divided between pro- and anti-Modi. And since I disapprove of hate politics, I had placed myself squarely in the second lot, till the inevitable happened and Modi was compelled to distance himself and his party from its own spokespersons!

Modi will leave his footprints on the sands of time only if he grasps this opportunity to unite instead of divide. This is what he himself had set out to do initially. Spokespersons are a powerful lot. Many have been promoted to Cabinet rank, like Nirmala Sitharaman and Smriti Irani. Nirmala merited the lift in her political fortunes, but Nupur Sharma, despite her large and committed following, was consigned to the boondocks, along with a senior man whose name does not figure so frequently in the news.

The sidelining of Nupur is causing tremors in an otherwise well-oiled machine. Modi has the sagacity to weather that storm but what about its fallout? Will the BJP core constituency survive the shock of the swift action taken against Nupur to appease Muslim nations who employ tens of thousands of our nationals, supply the crude oil vital to our economy and import into their lands Indian products that we need to sell in order to survive?

And it is in this context that I felt genuine pity for my PM! On mature consideration of his achievements and failures I have concluded that like the Sultan Mahmud of Omar Khayyam, our PM needs his nation’s sympathy and backing. Modi was elected by the people of India with an overwhelming majority, albeit in the ‘first-past-the post’ system where the majority of voters who cast their votes may not have supported his party’s candidates. But the fact remains that in our system of elections, planned on the Westminster model, he won hands down. Every Indian has to accept him as her or his PM and shore him up in a crisis.

My friends will argue that the crisis was of his own making. His deafening silence when venom was spewed on the minority community and bulldozers used to flatten their property was what led to this crisis. I will not be able to refute these arguments, but I have thought of many reasons to support him at this time of reckoning.

The first and foremost reason is that Modi is a born leader. His power of convincing the masses through his oratorical skills are unparalleled. No opposition leader on the political horizon today has this gift. True, the gift can be misused to turn black into white, at times, but the fact that he gets off with it is also a skill, though one may debate whether it is a sign of political cunning or mere skullduggery.

The second argument in his favor, and one which cannot be contradicted, is his commitment to the country and its progress. Modi works 18 hours a day, has no dependent except an old mother in Gujarat. Hence, pressure on civil servants from ‘family’ is nil and that is a true blessing in our version of democracy. Modi himself, like his predecessor, Manmohan Singh, has never been accused, or even remotely suspected of corruption. His party, like all parties, requires huge amounts of money to operate. It makes its pile from electoral bonds that big corporate houses purchase from designated banks. There are many NRIs also who are happy to support his party.

The PM is in a serious catch-22 situation. He and his party have gained electorally from the hate they have disseminated in society. Besides the enthusiasm it engendered among core supporters, even the subaltern castes have been won over. A great mass of Hindus today support the BJP because each one of them has been fed on hate for the Muslims. As if a people thought to live on hate alone can prosper.

Modi is a shrewd politician. Single-handedly he has won the elections for the saffron party. From its committed, assured vote of 21 per cent of total votes cast countrywide, the BJP went up to 31 per cent in 2014 and 37 per cent in 2019. The incremental vote has come from the marginalized who he has won over with welfare measures that only far-left parties are known to take.

But Modi, like most populist politicians, is conscious of his own standing in people’s hearts and his image in the popular lexicon. He knew immediately that he had slipped when the Gulf’s Muslim sultans, who he had so assiduously cultivated, spoke up in unison against the hate spewed by his party spokespersons!

By suspending one and sacking the other, he managed to appease the Muslim rulers, but by virtue of the punitive action he took against those he incorrectly described as ‘fringe elements’, he opened simultaneously a can of worms. Nupur Sharma has a vast following among BJP’s core supporters and this section has revolted. It is now the duty of the more enlightened population to wean Modi away from the politics of hate that is destroying this country and defend him against the fringe elements that he wittingly or unwittingly empowered.

To win him over, we must emphasize Modi’s personal importance in the country, and in the world, and how important it is for him to change tack and lead a united country instead of an army of ‘fringe elements’. Modi will leave his footprints on the sands of time only if he grasps this opportunity to unite instead of divide. Incidentally, this is what he himself had set out to do initially. All armchair intellectuals, secular liberals, urban Naxals, pseudo-secularists and minorities will welcome his change of heart, if it occurs. Perhaps the RSS Sarsangchalak will also come out openly and renew his advice to good Hindus not to go searching for Shivalingas in every mosque in the country. And that would really cap our efforts. Keep the fingers crossed.

(The author is a retired IPS officer)