The Dignity of Suffering

The Dignity of Suffering

Why is the New York Times (NYT) taking up cudgels against Narendra Modi with the oft-trotted out Congress line? It is almost in the way of a lobbyist’s poison-pen press-release, and that too in terms of an editorial stance led by a Mr. Rosenthal, who claims an Indian background, despite his  confusingly splendid Jewish name. In an editorial, as we all know, motivated opinion can, if one is so inclined, substitute for facts.

The NYT accuses Modi of lack of inclusiveness and tolerance. It questions the Gujarat model of growth and its efficacy. It complains about NaMo’s attitude to Muslims and fabricates accusations that the Muslims of Gujarat have stayed backward under his leadership. This even as NaMo gains lakhs of followers of every shade everywhere in rally after rally around this country.

The NYT has completely ignored the procession of noted Muslim clerics and community leaders speaking up with increasing frequency to make clear that they see no difficulty in Muslims voting for Modi and the BJP.

Oblivious of all this, and other inconvenient facts like what the people of India may want, but from all the way across the other side of the world, the NYT, declining circulation and all, declares Modi unsuitable to lead India!

Is it because the NYT is Leftist, like the Guardian in the UK, and feels uncomfortable with a market-friendly Modi? Is it responding truly to Congress lobbyists in the US? After all, its DNA of Left-leaning views provides suitable cover.

There is paradoxically a Leftist Western agenda, given that the West is meant to be Capitalist, to keep India dependent on imports in vital areas such as high technology, defence, aviation, and so on. There is obviously a lot of money in it for them.

A strong nationalist leader like Narendra Modi, not seen in these parts since Indira Gandhi, does not make this lobby very comfortable. They much prefer Congress with its status- quoist ways, populist cynicism, its vote bank politics and matching, if sanctimonious, Leftist rhetoric.

Throughout the 66 years of India’s independent life, with the brief exception of the Vajpayee led BJP years, the government of India has seen fit to keep business and industry on a tight leash as if it were dealing with juvenile delinquents.

As a consequence, we are, in India Inc. forever in potential mode, pitied universally for our folly but grandly oblivious to it. We have chosen to liberalise and reform in fits and starts over decades, with grudging, if tantalising, concessions and relaxing of controls. But this happens so excruciatingly slowly, so sporadically, that strange mutations of the supposedly original intent are strewn all over the landscape. Many on the inside admit privately that the government likes to ensure that the private sector does not grow too competent or independent.

The most frustrated with this farce cum fandango are the captains of business and industry who have been longing for some strong governmental support that so many businesses from other countries enjoy, but which is simply not available to Indian business.  They have tasted this in Gujarat and want it nationally.

There has long been a feeling amongst them that one cannot grow ever at one’s own pace because of regulatory and financing constraints, and certainly not on a large enough scale in India to be globally competitive.

Many business houses have accordingly bought companies abroad after being enabled by liberalised foreign exchange controls and external borrowing concessions, and operate substantially from these foreign bases in an international context, rather than in an India-centric manner.  

Indian business finds it difficult to be efficient at home and competitive abroad because of other bottle-necks of infrastructure, power, water, roads, ports, technology, responsiveness and speed. All this is necessary for povertarian politics of course. And the threat that it could change if Narendra Modi becomes prime minister at the head of a BJP led government is unsettling in some quarters.

Indian business however, the stock market, foreign business, some  governments who would like a more dynamic India to emerge, are waiting eagerly for this to happen.

Congress meanwhile is increasingly running scared of NaMo’s momentum, and hoping its populism will save it from being turfed out in 2014. Getting the NYT, other foreign media voices like them to put in a good word for them is part of this defence. But several others, including The Economist, have opined that Modi, is indeed the right horse for the course India must now travel. That he is some distance out in front of the BJP field is acknowledged, but not in a disapproving manner.

India has waited a long time to take its place in the sun. It is a growing hope amongst many people that the time is at hand for a decisive leader like Narendra Modi to give dignity to our suffering, a suffering that has been continuous from the midnight hour in 1947 when we became free and Nehru made lofty references to our as yet unfulfilled destiny.

There is an illustrative story, an allegory, about this endless and unnecessary wait, in the news. A musician and song-writer called Rodriguez, now 70, a one-time Tamla Motown sessions musician in Detroit, recorded two studio albums and one live one in the Seventies. His story featured in CNN’s 60 Minutes this week.

All of Rodriguez’s albums sank without a trace in the US at the time. But they travelled, unknown to him, to South Africa, then still in the grip of apartheid. There, Rodriguez was more popular than Elvis Presley.

Sixto Rodriguez was the voice of the people’s aspirations for freedom and equity in South Africa, a poet-troubadour that sang about what was in people’s hearts. Rodriguez himself had no clue about this, and earned not a penny from his popularity there.

Lately, a new age film maker, Malik Bendjelloul, traced his  story, found Rodriguez living in obscurity still in Detroit, earning his living as a labourer on construction sites, living in the same house with a wood burning stove for forty years – and a father of three lovely daughters.

Bendjelloul’s film, made on a shoe-string budget over 4 years: “ Searching for Sugar Man” (2012), opened the Sundance Film Festival this year. And in a fairy tale progression, relaunched Rodriguez’s musical career, and earned an Oscar in the documentary category for Bendjelloul.

The South Africans welcomed Rodriguez, in the flesh, to sell-out venues, fondly; but also as a Lazarus figure, because it had been rumoured that Rodriguez had committed suicide on stage, setting himself on fire in the most grisly of rock ‘n roll suicides, sometime, way back, when after the two albums were never followed by a third.

But Sixto Rodriguez was, in fact, alive and still able to perform. In America too, at last he was noticed, and went on a sell-out national tour. At last Rodriguez had some money. In his obscure years on the construction sites, he had taken the trouble to earn a college degree in philosophy and handled his life with dignity, playing his music wherever and whenever he could.

Now, on his lack of success then, in the Seventies, Rodriguez says simply that it wasn’t his time. On his iconic status in South Africa to this day, he says with tremendous self- effacement, an impressive dignity of suffering, that it is nice to be noticed.

On how he felt when his albums were not appreciated in the US in his youth, he said: “I was too disappointed to be disappointed”.

And on the here and now Rodriguez says cautiously: ‘Yes, I’ve had a good year”.

(1,267  words)

October  27^th, 2013

Gautam Mukherjee