Two Books Remind Us of the Importance of June 4, 2024

The news cycle blinds you with its speed, and its trajectory constantly diverts your attention. The pressure to keep up with what’s going on takes a toll on our ability to cogitate and reflect. June 4, 2024 seems much more than a year away. Even the elections to the state legislative assemblies of Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir (which is still a Union territory) seem to have taken place a long time ago. The allegations of inflating voter-rolls in Maharashtra are not remembered easily. The announcements and antics of the president of the United States and his acolyte the oligarch, the attack on tourists in Pahalgam, the four-day war with Pakistan and the disinformation accompanying it – have all occupied the collective mind-spaces of the world’s most populous nation in recent weeks.

Twelve months down the line, many seem to be forgetting that Modi 3.0 is distinctly different, and certainly weaker, than Modi 2.0 or even Modi 1.0. The difference between 303 MPs in the Lok Sabha and 240 MPs is a significant change from the one-party rule witnessed over a decade. The denouement perhaps ushers a return to coalition politics that India experienced between 1977 and 1980 and again between 1989 and 2014 (including the five years that P.V. Narasimha Rao was prime minister).

Would it then be an exaggeration to contend that after having mutated into a cat, the tiger is still pretending that little has changed? That what we see today is more bluff and bravado on the part of our ‘Supreme Leader’?

There are many, including more than a third of the voting electorate, who opted for the ruling dispensation, who argue that for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah, it is business as usual. Such loyal bhakts and other not-so-loyal supporters of the BJP point out that it’s amazing that Modi was sworn in as head of the Union government for the third time, notwithstanding anti-incumbency sentiments, and that Jawaharlal Nehru’s record is about to be broken. They do not believe that internal dissensions in the right-wing, especially within the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), are noteworthy and have exacerbated after the elections. Nor do they consider important the fact that the BJP is yet to “elect” its new president.

To all those who think along such lines, one urges them to return to the first half of 2024 and read two best-selling works of non-fiction by two of India’s best-known political journalists who work across the media: the written word and the audio-visual medium. Rajdeep Sardesai and Ashutosh (he uses one name) were both born in 1965 and both of them have spent over three decades in the profession. I have personally known both of them for quite a few years. It is, therefore, a challenging task for me to review their most recent books. I shall endeavour nevertheless.

Journalists are often their own biggest enemies. Is the situation very different if one looks at other fraternities and professions, namely those of lawyers, doctors, engineers, tailors, cobblers, politicians, civil servants, authors, academics and publishers? Perhaps not. As a journalist, I assert that these two books are both excellent accounts and analyses of the 2024 general elections. Both are strong on reportage, understanding and explanation. Both are filled with personal anecdotes, Sardesai’s book (2024: The Election That Surprised India) much more than the one by Ashutosh (Reclaiming Bharat: What Changed in 2024 and What Lies Ahead). Both have arrived at their conclusions, agree with them or not, after meeting many dozens of political players, practitioners and pretenders across the ideological spectrum: right, left and centre.

The two books seek to answer a series of important questions. Why did pollsters get the outcome of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections so wrong? Why was the so-called mainstream media so partisan? Why did the BJP’s char sau paar rhetoric not work on the ground, particularly in India’s largest state Uttar Pradesh? In Ayodhya/Faizabad where the grandiose Ram Mandir stands, why did the BJP fail so miserably? Lazy reportage and preconceived notions were certainly responsible for large sections of the media failing – or unwilling – to read the writing on the wall.

Sardesai’s book devotes considerable space in examining the role of law enforcement agencies, notably the Enforcement Directorate, in weakening the Opposition and making the playing-field rather uneven. And both books seek to examine whether the elections were truly free and fair. A chapter in Ashutosh’s book is aptly titled “When the referee turns rogue.” He also examines “The divinity factor” and asks if by comparing himself with the Almighty, our non-biological prime minister put off many voters, including some who may have voted for him earlier.

Whereas Sardesai’s book is chock-a-block with anecdotes about his interactions with many politicians – some of these presumably took place after the studio cameras had stopped rolling – Ashutosh quotes several scholars and perceptive observers of the political scene to bolster his argument that what has taken place in India in recent years is nothing short of a right-wing “revolution,” a word he acknowledges has been challenged in contextual terms. He details how the Constitution of India became an electoral issue of great import, largely because of the arrogance and the stupidity of some of the leaders of the BJP.

Politics in India is full of surprises. How many of us could have anticipated that a cabinet meeting would be convened on the caste census just after the Pahalgam attacks took place?

At a function on the occasion of the release of Ashutosh’s book in which Sardesai was a speaker, after erudite discussions had taken place on issues such as “electoral democracy versus constitutional democracy”, he left with a parting shot on whether what the country has witnessed over the last decade or thereabouts was the “rise of Hindutva” or the “rise of Moditva”. Sardesai’s book, unlike the one by Ashutosh, always seeks to “strike a balance” between contending viewpoints – not that is prevents the former from taking positions. Sardesai candidly explains the circumstances that led to him being “penalised” by his employer for his hurried on-air remarks on January 26, 2021 when protesting farmers had arrived at the heart of New Delhi and a young person had died. He hasn’t changed his employer since.

Be that as it may, much as the garam masala in Sardesai’s book tickled this reviewer’s tongue, I found the penultimate chapter titled “‘You Are Godi Media’: The Media Takeover” especially revealing and interesting. (A disclaimer is in order here: he quotes me at length in this chapter.) The parts on the “hostile takeover” of New Delhi Television by the Adani group, the bashing that been inflicted on the NewsClick portal and the pivotal role played by the PM’s information adviser Hiren Joshi have all been described in a riveting style, adroitly mixing the personal and the public.

As a small publisher and copy editor, I was frankly appalled not by the niggling factual errors I chanced upon in Sardesai’s book, but by the innumerable and egregious stylistic errors that are scattered right through Ashutosh’s book. For example, there is no rhyme or reason in the way the acronym BJP has been expanded to Bharatiya Janata Party or compressed across several chapters. I don’t blame Ashutosh in the least but lousy copy editors. Were they in a tearing hurry to bring the book out?

Cribbing and quibbling aside, the two books are very important and must be read by all interested in the complex and unpredictable working of what continues to be described as the “world’s largest democracy” with or without qualifications. Both Sardesai and Ashutosh grapple hard with the meanings and the implications of the word “democracy”, making the books meaningful for academics and laypersons alike. From what I understand, both the volumes can be considered “best-sellers” by Indian standards. They deserve to be. One hopes the publishers will seriously consider translating the two books into as many languages as possible to enlarge and widen their readership.

Independent journalism in Modi’s “new India” has been severely constrained over the last decade or so, battered by shortages of resources and buffeted by the exigencies of news-cycles. Under the circumstances, the two books under review by the senior journalists give us reason to be cautiously optimistic about India’s political future. After all, as they have emphasised, not too many anticipated the outcome of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta is an independent journalist, author, publisher, documentary film-maker, producer of music videos and an occasional teacher. For details, visit www.paranjoy.in