FIFTY-SEVEN races are still to be decided on Saturday, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi says he has already won a thumping majority. Let’s see the mind more than the logic at work here.
It was Jawaharlal Nehru’s 60th death anniversary on Monday. His grandson Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on May 21 during an election campaign in 1991. Rajiv was the last member of the Nehru-Gandhi family to be prime minister. All said and done, there was civility in the electoral discourse under their watch even if the battles were bitterly fought.
Narendra Modi, like his inspiration Donald Trump, has deliberately vulgarised India’s political discourse, and how. As the longest Indian elections trundle towards the last punishing phase in the scalding heat devouring much of the country, one is reminded of the most pivotal and brilliantly short March 16-20 polls Indira Gandhi ordered in 1977. There were 542 seats in the fray even then, but polling was not stretched over 44 days of hate-filled name-calling as is happening today.
Indira Gandhi made the announcement on Jan 18, and leading opposition groups met on Jan 20 to create the Janata Party. There were no invectives hurled from either side during the unblemished polls. If we must find a reason for this general civility, it could be simply that the leaders were nicer and perhaps also because the elections were held when the emergency was still on. It ended only on March 21, the day after the polls were completed.
The claim of having won a third term........