Time has started to turn against the Modi regime and its Achilles Heel has been exposed
‘Who is drunk with power does not come to his senses before he falls’ – Ved Vyasa, The Mahabharata
I
The influential Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin – who has earned epithets such as ‘Putin’s Rasputin’ to ‘the most dangerous philosopher in the world’ – has an idea about Great War of Continents – the very basis of geopolitical understanding of history: Sea Power against Land Power.
Instead of seeing political history as a struggle between the colonials and the colonised – the mercantile aggressors and the native defenders – Dugin ideates that ‘There is an everlasting battle between two types of civilisations – sea civilisation and land civilisation’. He calls this ‘the eternal cold war’.
Dugin extends his idea to understand the present ‘cold war’, ‘trade war’, ‘proxy war’ and ‘media war’ between the sea civilisation (uni-polar ‘Atlanticists’ – US, NATO states, Israel and Saudi Arabia) and land civilisation (multipolar Eurasians – Russia, Shia countries of the Middle East, Turkey and China).
I don’t necessarily agree with everything that Dugin propagates. I also understand that due to the unilateral sanctions and trade tariffs being imposed upon the world by the US President Donald Trump, serious fissures have developed within the ‘Atlanticist’ group. The situation is such that the European Union is mulling counter-sanctions / trade tariffs against Trump’s USA.
But everyone can clearly understand what Dugin points out that the ongoing battle – that has escalated since 2017 between the declining unipolar Atlantica Empire and the rising multipolar Eurasia – will re-orient, re-define and re-shape the 21st century world.
India’s position in the battle is not well defined. Geographically it is part of Eurasia, but the influence of the Atlanticists over the government, the media and the Anglophone society is also immense.
Truth is, the Modi Government cannot be more closer to the Atlanticists, when it displays traits akin to a ‘sea civilisation’: aggressive mercantile conquistadors out to colonise natives and conquer territories, hook or by crook, while forcefully implementing the ideas of the globalist Atlanticists – cashless economy, technocratic digitalisation, surveillance of citizens, manufactured fear-mongering, systemic polarisations, erosion of civil liberties, turning of mainstream media to pro-plutocracy lapdog from people’s watchdog, promotion of shallow low-brow and middle-brow culture, whole-sale corporatisation, creation of a debt-based societal system, persistence of ‘high inflation-stagnant wages’ phenomenon and the brutal neoliberalism – described as fascism by Noam Chomsky – that transfers more wealth and more power to the top 1% at hyper-speed while reducing social welfare and societal justice, and thereby increasing chronic inequality and paralysing the poor and the Middle classes.
Just like the modern Atlanticists, the Modi regime seems be ‘fully privatised’ by a select cabal of national and foreign corporate and banking power.
Despite the deceptions, lies and propaganda, it rather easy to see that all the major policies of the Modi regime have hidden agendas to favour private bankers and select corporations.
When an Indian Government is prepared to mindlessly re-engineer the economy and the society by using the Western ‘neoliberal template’ while inflicting massive socio-economic pain and suffering to its people – to the detriment of the nation, I can surely say that instead of the Imperial British Raj, we are witnessing Colonisation 2.0: a covert Atlanticist Raj of Imperial Globalist Corporations.
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Indian philosophy tells us that the microcosm is a mirror of the macrocosm. This seems to be true, not only in spiritual and cosmological terms, but also in terms of politics.
What is being played out in the global context – the battle between the unipolar Atlanticists and multipolar Eurasians – is now shaping up in the Indian context.
The unipolar RSS-BJP Empire is being challenged by a mutipolar alliance of opposition parties.
What are at stake are democracy, Constitution and sovereignty of the nation.
The threat to democracy and the Constitution is well known. I also add ‘sovereignty’ because India under the Modi regime is becoming a vassal / client state of the globalist Atlanticists and losing its independence to choose one’s own economic policies.
Even the Modi regime and its crony corporations are parroting the same slogans – such as ‘data is the new oil’ – that were first promoted by the globalist Atlanticists.
So the ‘nationalist’ regime is ‘nationalist’ only in propaganda, but not in practice. A deceptive halo has been created for the gullible to trap them with the bait of ‘Hindu nationalism’.
So one has to understand what is going on by two essential things: first, the attempt to engineer society with RSS-Hindutva: convert all Hindus and colonise every territory with the Hindutva ideology and secondly, the attempt to engineer economy with Globalist Atlanticists: convert and colonise every territory with technocratic neoliberalism.
In other words, the systemic drive to dismantle India and create an authoritarian theocratic neoliberal state of an ‘Atlanticist Hindutva Rashtra’.
A shallow conservative militant theocracy blended with brutal neoliberal capitalism – an idea that doesn’t exist in our constitution.
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When I first heard of the new word Moditva, I thought it is nothing but Savarkar’s Hindutva with a smart phone dangling at the end of a selfie stick.
But now, I understand what Moditva strain of the Hinduvta ideology is in reality: it is ‘RSS Hindutva’ plus ‘Atlanticist Neoliberalism’ imposed forcefully upon the nation with the traits and symptoms of a plutocratic fascist sociopathic kakistocracy.
In other words: a ‘civilisational crisis’ and an ‘existentialist disaster’.
II
What was started by Narendra Modi in 2014 was supposed to last for 50 years – as per the dream of BJP President Amit Shah. But in 4 years, it has lost its majority in the Parliament.
The story is that in 27 by-elections since 2014, the BJP and its allies haven’t gained a single Lok Sabha (LS) seat, and have managed to win only 7 Assembly seats out of 27 Assembly and LS seats.
BJP and its allies have lost LS seats in the Hindi-Hindustan heartland and are tottering in Uttar Pradesh (UP), especially after a priest / head of a mutt became the Chief Minister in 2017.
The incompetence in governance by the priesthood was inevitable, and this will add to the anti-incumbency factor.
So time had already started to gradually turn on the ground for the Modi regime, and now, the turn is accelerating.
Helped almost by random chance and the invisible force of time itself, all of a sudden a clear direction has emerged within the opposition forces.
Much before Nietzsche said ‘from chaos, comes order’, Sun Tzu in The Art of War pointed out ‘in the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity’.
The chaos within the opposition – trying to survive the RSS-BJP juggernaut who wanted to forge an ‘opposition mukt Bharat’ – has given birth to an opportunity and a subsequent idea, whose time has surely come.
It is no longer a battle between RSS-BJP, the Congress and the Third Front, but a battle between RSS-BJP with its allies against a United Opposition or a Secular Democratic Alliance.
The success of this strategy has been experienced once again, after Phulpur and Gorakhpur, in Kairana LS Bypoll when a SP leader Tabassum Hasan – a Muslim woman – fought on a hand pump symbol of RLD in western UP with the support of SP, BSP and the Congress, and won easily against the BJP candidate.
Jayant Chaudhury of RLD who played a pivotal role in this victory said that a higher ideal had united the opposition. ‘We all realised that the BJP was a danger to the fabric of society. This is an anti-farmer government that needs to be defeated.’
Going by the Atlanticist ‘neoliberal template’ that the RSS-BJP Government is pursuing, one can safely say that corporatisation of farming and privatisation of our national banks will be on the horizon, if PM Narendra Modi returns to power in 2019.
The regime that could do something as dark and as reckless as 8/11 or ‘demonetisation’, can do just about anything. It certainly doesn’t deserve another chance.
So our best hope rides with the multipolar alliance to bring an end to the most divisive and damaging government in the history of independent India.
Anti-incumbency, opposition unity and simple arithmetic – 69% is bigger than 31% – has changed the prospect of 2019 General Elections.
Along with the Hindutva forces, Modi regime is a government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations.
We need to change this in 2019 – the year of the critical battle for the soul and destiny of India.
Along with the secular forces, we need a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Much needs to be done, but some needs to be done first:
¤ We need to regain sovereignty from being dictated by the Globalist Atlanticists.
¤ We need to end pro-corporation neoliberal policies and replace them with pro-people policies of development.
¤ We need to stop the aggressive Hindi-Hindustan-Hindutva engineering attempt to homogenise our diverse and plural culture.
¤ We need to protect the multilingual federal structure.
¤ We need to bring back truth, authenticity and credibility in the speech and the actions of the government.
¤ We need to heal our society from the anxieties, stresses and strains which have erupted since 2014.
¤ We need to bring back humane values in public discourse, reverse the de-humanisation of the manufactured ‘enemies of the nation’ and prevent the normalisation of immoral, thuggish and unlawful practices as Chanakya Niti and political masterstrokes.
¤ We need to safeguard the esoteric ideals and spiritual principles of real Hinduism instead of replacing it with the hate-filled militant Hindutva of Savarkar.
¤ We need to strengthen the educational, the cultural and the democratic institutions – the media, the judiciary, the election commission, the legislative and the executive – which are being diluted by the present regime.
Amidst the dismal failures in governance, downturn in all sectors of the economy, rising cost of living, the global oil shock and adverse ruptures in the societal fabric, the BJP’s persistence for ‘super-hero-like’ myth-making of an under-performing and failing Prime Minister will accelerate the anti-incumbency sentiment.
Yet the RSS-BJP will try to make 2019 a Presidential race, but we are a parliamentary democracy. We vote to choose Members of Parliament who decide upon the Prime Minister. The 2019 battle should be forged as a battle of policies, not personalities.
So no face needs to be projected against PM Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister candidate of the Opposition Alliance can be chosen after the elections.
The Achilles heel of the Modi regime has been exposed: it is opposition unity.
But the multipolar alliance needs to manage egos and narrow self-interest in the larger interest of the nation and also needs to frame a progressive and inclusive manifesto.
If the 2019 General Elections are seen as 543 local elections – with the strongest united-opposition candidate against the RSS-BJP candidate – then it will be curtains for the Modi regime.
The comeuppance will happen: the much deserved inglorious and ignominious exit.
Unity is the only strategy for the opposition, the people and the idea of India to recover, survive and prosper.
Unexpected things will also occur. The RSS-BJP camp will try to spring surprises and the upcoming elections in the Hindi heartland – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh – will also indicate what is likely to happen in 2019 and will alter the battle strategies.
If RSS-BJP suffers great losses in the coming Assembly Elections, the unthinkable can also take place: the very position of Narendra Modi as the unchallenged Prime Ministerial candidate of RSS-BJP can be in jeopardy.
When time itself starts to turn against you, then no ‘power, wealth, muscle and hubris’ can save the inevitable downfall.
I just think that such a turn has begun against the Modi regime, and its spiralling momentum can no longer be halted or reversed.
[The views expressed belong solely to the author, and may not reflect the opinions of the editorial team]