The Wife Against Modi

On the way to the car from the polling station, I asked the wife who she had voted for.

“ABM party,” she said, “Anyone but Modi.”

“Isn’t that being completely negative? You guys don’t have a positive message,” I said, a tad exasperated. “You just want to keep India’s most popular man out of power.”

“I don’t want to discuss this with you,” the wife barked viciously. “That’s the only way to keep our marriage intact.”

“Why? Why don’t you want to get into an honest debate?” I asked. The wife always wins every debate, but this time I had some points, which she would find hard to counter.

“What’s there to debate? You support a communal fascist, I oppose him.”

“If Modi is communal, then so is the Congress. If Modi had a hand in the 2002 riots, then Rajiv Gandhi was equally responsible for the 1984 Sikh riots,” I said.

“So? Is Rajiv Gandhi fighting the elections to be PM right now?” the wife asked.      

“No. But, the Congress Party is,” I countered. “They have not disowned Rajiv Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi delayed the entry of the army in Delhi in November 1984. He unlocked the Babri Masjid gates for Hindus to worship. He launched Ramayan on Doordarshan, which produced three BJP MPs. He overturned the Supreme Court’s verdict in the Shah Bano case. How can you say that his politics was any less communal than Modi’s? ”

The wife was a little taken aback. She didn’t expect me to know all this. I didn’t tell her that I had picked it up from what my friend Rahul said on TV last night. The wife doesn’t watch news-TV so she will never know.

“I don’t care what the Congress says about Rajiv Gandhi today,” she said, after a short pause. “He died in 1991. And, there’s a huge difference between his Congress and the Congress Party of his wife and son.”

“Rajiv Gandhi was a pro-market, pro-reform figure,” the wife continued. “He was partial to Reagonmics and the trickle-down theory. He believed in using computers to take India to the 21^st century. He believed that India could be a local Big Brother and fought a disastrous war in Sri Lanka. He was surrounded by extremely cynical career politicians like Arun Nehru and he often took wrong political decisions. That is why he squandered away the biggest mandate ever in Indian politics and lost power in just 5 years.”

“The Sonia-Rahul Congress is entirely different. It is pro-poor, sceptical of market forces, wary of corporates. It is a hard-liberal party on social issues, including on political hot-potatoes like homosexuality. It has taken a consistently strong position against fundamentalisms and communalisms of all kinds.”

“In other words, there is no continuity between the Congress that was behind the 1984 riots and the Congress of today,” the wife said emphatically. “On the other hand, the man who did 2002 in Gujarat is the same man who wants to be PM today.”

By now, the wife had sensed victory. “And let me tell you a little bit more about 1984, than what you have picked up from TV news debates.” The wife has never hesitated from hitting below the belt, even when her opponent is down.

“The entire rank and file of the RSS participated in the 1984 riots. Police records clearly establish that. Nanaji Deshmukh, the great guru of the Sangh, gave a public speech supporting Rajiv Gandhi and implying the Sikhs had it coming. The BJP’s core vote shifted en masse to the Congress, which is why the BJP ended up with just two seats in the 1984 Lok Sabha elections.”

“The same people who were dancing around the bonfires of 1984 are today supporting Modi. And the irony is that they are throwing 1984 in Rahul Gandhi’s face to claim that he is the same as that fascist,” said the wife. “The sad part is that you corporate types buy that argument because you want a pro-market PM to push your agenda.” 

I looked ahead and drove silently.

Have to call Rahul as soon as I get home. Need some more points to counter the wife.