Prime Minister Narendra Modi is just not a politician, he is more than that. He is an idea that most Indians were subconsciously waiting to transform into a reality; a thought that is not metaphorical, and a consciousness that is amalgamated with unaccountable aggression, anger, and apathy.
If you look around, what do you see? In a span of five years, India as a society has witnessed a vociferous and unapologetic jingoism, upper-caste fascism, and unfettered perilous politics, Orwellianism of data and privacy, jobless growth, anti-beef pogrom and post-truth narratives on media.
One cannot blame and bash PM Modi totally. He is just acting as a medium for many of us to unleash our inherent egotism and oppressive attitude. As a community, while building the so-called modern civilization of tall buildings and cities, we are unknowingly failing the socialization processes. The ‘agents of socialization’ have compromised with irrational thinking, and adjusted to cognitive tools with incoherent thoughts; as such it is anyway a post-truth era and an epoch of anger, materialism and confirmation bias.
PM Modi is just delivering to his audience, what we had been knowingly or unknowingly feeding each other till date. Most of his toadies see their reflection in his personality, mindset, and speeches. If you try to make them ‘think’ by putting forth a rational perspective, they will bash you for triggering their matrix of fake consciousness and clutches of fake news.
Ignorance is not a ‘demonetized’ bliss, in today’s fake-news ecosystem. Read Alt-News co-founder Pratik Sinha’s interview to unearth the grand circus of Modi’s media policy.
A survey report, in the month of October 2017, by the PEW Institute, revealed that the majority of Indians prefers autocracy and military dictatorship. “In India, where the economy has grown on average by 6.9% since 2012, 85% (of people) trust their national government,” Pew Research said in a report based on its survey on governance. According to this survey, more than one-fourth of Indians (27%) want a “strong leader”. These numerical conclusions summarize the growth of ‘Modi syndrome’ in India and hint at the context of this article.
The Modi syndrome is being systematically injected into the social system of India, thoroughly equipping a new environment (New India) in a way that people would automatically pay blind obeisance to the authorities and their political statism, by letting the people assimilate a new culture without direct acceptance, otherwise dissents would anyway experience the heat for not adjusting. A few weeks back, in this context, a young BJP candidate Tejasvi Surya in his speech made it succinct, “if you are not with Modi, you are with anti-India forces”. Such immersion of ‘Dunning-Kruger effect’ is the latest evaporation of a perilous trend, which is for sure to get the constitutional, post-2019 election.
It is not a conspiracy anymore to comprehend that ‘Modi syndrome’ is a new normal. The gradual development of Modi syndrome, since May 2014, has made India collapse on her ‘freedom of speech’ global index rank (published in the year 2018) from 136th to 138th, just one rank above the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (which stands at 139th).
On the other side of the world, do you recollect the apathetic nature of his crowd and toadies shouting ‘Mari nakho, mari nakho (kill him, kill him)‘ at an election rally in his Gujarat state, in the year 2007, when Modi was assuring his citizens that Sohrabuddin Sheikh ‘got what he deserved’? I guess, No.
In today’s political climate, his assurance has received an extendable warm welcome in our society which is eventually normalizing Modi syndrome. Titles like “Urban Naxal“, statements like “go to Pakistan“, premises like “If you are not with Modi, you are anti-national”, whatabouteries like “what did Nehru do?” etc are just the advanced stages of ‘Mari nakho, mari nakho’ school of thought intended to mechanically hijack the cognition of mass audience from discovering the truth and intellectualism.
The citizens who do not experience these online statements/certificates are brutally suffering from ‘Modi syndrome’ and far luckier to have their free speech not spiralled down to the culture of silence and suppression. For which, a renowned journalist Gauri Lankesh paid a heavy price.