Who are Narendra Modi’s Biggest Haters?

A popular quote from the movie Amar Akbar Anthony goes, “Aaisa toh aadmi life mein do ich time bhaagta hai. Olympic ka race ho yah police ka case ho. Tum kis liye bhaagta hai bhai?”

For this post, I’m adapting the quote to: “Modi ke against itni NAFRAT toh teen ich type ke log karte hai… tum kis type ke ho?” So, what are the three types? The answer is in the three WhatsApp groups I belong to—my high, undergraduate, and graduate school class groups.

In the mid-70s, I graduated from Tyndale Biscoe School, a premier high school in the Kashmir Valley. The Kashmir dispute was a focal issue in everyday Kashmiri discourse then as it is now. If my high school class had been asked whether Kashmir should belong to India or Pakistan, the response would have been—all Hindus and Sikhs for India and all Muslims for Pakistan. I do not recall a single Muslim classmate who had any love whatsoever for India. Expectedly Muslim classmates in my high school group despise Modi, the poster child of Hindu nationalism.

Modi ousted a government whose composition soothed the Islamic soul. For ten years before Modi, the principal political drivers of the Indian government—Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, and several of their trusted advisers such as Ahmed Patel, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Oscar Fernandes, Ambika Soni, A. K. Anthony—were non-Hindus.

This almost nirvana government for Muslims was replaced with a guy who wears his Hindu religion up his sleeve, abrogates the sacrosanct Article 370, and pushes Pakistan on the backfoot. Not surprisingly, Kashmiri Muslims hate Modi more than they have hated any other leader.

Are Muslims in the rest of India different from Kashmiri Muslims? Their sense of national identity differs from that of Kashmiri Muslims, but for most of them, not their hatred for Modi.

Post high school, I attended the well-regarded Regional Engineering College (now, National Institute of Technology), Kurukshetra (RECK) in Haryana. At a REC (NIT), half the class is from instate, and the other half is from the remaining states in the country. Consistent with this class mix in my WhatsApp group, the largest group of members is from Haryana.

In Haryana, Jats constitute more than a quarter of the population and wield considerable influence in politics and agriculture. Modi has incurred the wrath of Jats as he has of Sikhs in adjoining Punjab. The now-repealed farm laws infuriated Jat agriculturists, and they have been up in arms against Modi.

Disintermediation and de-localization, two consequences of the farm laws, would have eroded the local fiefdoms of influential political/agricultural families in Haryana and Punjab. Because the affected parties are opinion leaders, they were able to whip up community-wide sentiment against the farm laws. The negative community-based sentiment was reflected in the RECK group as well; the farm laws have been a source of ongoing conflict in the group this past year.

Those Modi-baiters who are a product of initiatives such as DeMo/GST/Farm Laws… are especially frustrated because many of them cannot share the exact nature of their pain in public. To compensate, they vent their frustration through a blanket critique of the Modi government.

A few years after graduating from RECK, I enrolled for an MBA at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB). IIMB relies on a very competitive selection process to admit intelligent and ambitious individuals with well-rounded personalities. The selection process is not foolproof, though—an average guy like me did manage to get in.

Among the three WhatsApp groups, the IIMB group is the least gullible, the most civil, and by far the most prosperous. Compared with the other groups, the talk in this group is occasionally highbrow, and there is an undercurrent of intellectual snobbishness. The topics range from entrepreneurship, equity markets, and wealth creation to atheism, majoritarianism, and secession.

Because most of my WhatsApp mates live in India, the groups are active while I am asleep in upstate New York. Every morning, I wake up to scores of messages in my WhatsApp groups. I typically browse the IIMB group after browsing the RECK group.

When I shift from the RECK to the IIMB group, it seems I have entered a different world. In the RECK group, I get to see several inspirational messages and good morning/day greetings with colorful religious imagery. Messages with religious images, however, are unfashionable in the IIMB group, even on festive occasions.

In the RECK group, the farmers’ agitation has been a hot-button issue; the IIMB group was not unduly bothered by this agitation. The recent Lakhimpur incident caused a lot of heartburn in the RECK group, but no one even mentioned the incident in the IIMB group. While there are some significant differences between the two groups, there is a common element—a group of vocal Modi-bashers.  

Somewhat in line with IIMB’s elite status, in the IIMB WhatsApp group, the anti-BJP/Modi narrative mirrors that of privileged Indian intellectuals and editors of several Western newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times and The Economist.

For example, the favorite fodder of the anti-Modi intellectual brigade both within and outside India is secularism. Well, the Modi-bashers in the IIMB group too find solace in secularism. And just like elsewhere, here too, when it comes to Modi and Modi government bashing, the intellectuals consign intellectualism to the backseat.

I would often be dismayed that in a country blessed with exemplary religious tolerance but plagued with gut-wrenching poverty, rampant corruption, and widespread misgovernance, secularism and not economic development used to be the differentiating election plank.

I thought in recent years, secularism was sidelined, and economic welfare was finally center stage, but I guess not so soon. Secularism has long been the last, and sometimes the only, refuge of many different Indian politicians, political commentators, and intellectuals. It is hard for them to kill this golden goose.  

Let me complete my adaptation of the Amar Akbar Anthony quote. It should be: “Modi ke against itni NAFRAT toh teen ich type ke log karte hai. Yah to minority ho, ya DeMo/GST/Farm Laws… ke maare ho, ya intellectual ho. Tum kis type ke ho bhai/behen?” Wait! These three categories are not mutually exclusive. Imagine the intensity of hatred for Modi among individuals for whom the three categories overlap.

What is my unsolicited message to the relentless Modi-hater? The human and economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, and saturation of pro-incumbency are likely to do the trick for you more than any spiteful rhetoric. So, hold your peace and bide your time till 2024! India might once again be a land where the streets are paved with gold, and social justice prevails far and wide.

English translation of Hindi quotes written in Roman script

Aaisa toh aadmi life mein do ich time bhaagta hai. Olympic ka race ho yah police ka case ho. Tum kis liye bhaagta hai bhai?” (A person runs like this on only two occasions in life. In an Olympic race or when fleeing cops. Why are you running bro?)

Amitabh Bachchan, as Anthony Gonsalves, has spoken this line in Amar Akbar Anthony, the gold standard masala movie.

“Modi ke against itni NAFRAT toh teen ich type ke log karte hai… tum kis type ke ho?” (Only three types of people have so much HATRED against Modi…What type do you represent?)

Modi ke against itni NAFRAT toh teen ich type ke log karte hai. Yah to minority ho, ya DeMo/GST/Farm Laws… ke maare ho, ya intellectual ho. Tum kis type ke ho bhai/behen?” (Only three types of people have so much HATRED against Modi. A religious minority, or someone stricken by DeMo/GST/Farm Laws…, or an intellectual. What type do you represent bro?)