"...With the ascension of Narendra Damodardas Modi to the prime ministership of India, Indian politics also enters, both literally and metaphorically, into the Age of Hologram. One may choose to call it as the Age of Shadows. After all, Mr. Modi did not only address a record 437 public rallies, but also appeared as a hologram, often simultaneously, in 1350 3D rallies. This near flesh and blood avatar of Mr. Modi disturbs the distinction between reality and illusion, and light and shadow.
"...Before we are able to pass judgment on the historic character of these elections, we must look at the results analytically, pointing at continuities and discontinuities, and contextualise these results with past elections. The following series of charts and maps provide this analytical contextualisation of the results. They do not cover the whole range of possible angles or topics but do shed some light on the processes that have led to an election verdict that will remain engraved in memory for long..."
"Phrases like ‘identity politics’ ‘caste politics’ and ‘communal politics’ are routinely used to denigrate any effort at acknowledging disadvantaged or marginal communities… Yet the unabashed strategy to consolidate and empower the upper caste Hindu vote bank is not only exempted from such criticism, it is often spoken of as a transcendence from such fractured politics. Dibyesh Anand explores the sinister double standard..."
"...the real danger is the capacity that Modi has shown in Gujarat to stifle dissent and bend the institutions of state to his will, to browbeat an already supine bureaucracy into doing exactly what he – and his sponsors – want; and, like any effective demagogue, to press the buttons that arouse the baser instincts and prejudices of his listeners. Now he and his party have the unlooked for opportunity of appointing such constitutional worthies as the CAG, the CVC, election commissioners et al. The prospect is not, to say the least, reassuring.
"As journalists, academics and other pundits scramble to make sense of the just concluded elections to the Indian parliament, one can discern a few broad strands of opinion... In this brief essay, I would like to assess the significance of these elections from a slightly different tangent, one that arguably eludes all of the outlined positions. I pose these questions: what does it mean for an openly religious party to achieve a clear majority in our national Parliament? What does that mean for our ideas of nationhood, and our desired futures?
"Omidyar Network, as Pando readers know, is the philanthropy arm of eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar. Since 2009, Omidyar Network has made more investments in India than in any other country in its portfolio. These investments were largely thanks to Jayant Sinha, a former McKinsey partner and Harvard MBA, who was hired in October 2009 to establish and run Omidyar Network India Advisors.
"On May 16, the day the election results gave the BJP a huge majority and sparked off huge celebrations, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)’s prant pracharak (state chief) for Bihar, Swant Ranjan, quietly left for Cuttack to attend the outfit’s 20-day training camp or parisikshan shivir. If the BJP is still soaking in the euphoria, RSS cadres, widely credited with ensuring the win in the heartland, are busy attending similar training camps in Bihar — one is under way at Barh and another set to commence on Saturday at Siwan.
"This article offers a preliminary analysis of what the Modi phenomenon means in terms of BJP’s sweeping win on 16 May. It makes four propositions.
First, we stop seeing it as an individual phenomenon centered on the personality of Modi even as his votaries as well as some critics tend to view it that way.
"The election of a new government in India is the result of a democratic exercise so vast that any critique of the mandate needs to be respectful. And more so, if it is a pre-emptive one. Yet, there are good reasons why some of us are fearful. Let’s begin with the much-proclaimed promise of ‘development’ and the great enthusiasm among the middle and elite classes for the ‘Gujarat model’. Just for the record, the state has always been among the more enterprising and prosperous ones.
A look at the messy electoral data, and reflection on the Modi-campaign, reveals something rather obvious at one level, but curiously ignored by some anti-Modi, anti-communal thinkers: this election is first and foremost a milestone in the Hindutva project. The problem of how to create an overarching Hindu identity - overriding but not dismantling caste and regional identities - obsessed the early Hindu nationalists. Creation and spread of a sense of Hindu-ness appears both as a means and as an end in their writings - it is both a pre-requisite for, and the definition of, "dharma rajya", the hazily defined "Hindu nation". And in this election it seems the Sangh Parivar has provided a proof of principle - they have shown that manufacturing an over-arching Hindu identity may be possible on a grand scale. What data backs up such a claim?...
