A Brown Note

This is just a short observation: I won’t take up much of your time.

Over the past day or two, I’ve spent an illuminating few sessions browsing comment fora online here and there, and it's amazing the amount of hate boiling out against not just "terrorists", or Muslims, but against all Arabs, and further, against all people with brown skin.

Of course, the average totally non-racist Islamophobes exercising their freedom of speech couldn't tell apart a Muslim from a Sikh or a Hindu, or for that matter an Arab from an Afghan or an Iranian from an Indian, but that doesn't, unsurprisingly, reduce in the slightest the amount of vitriol thrown at all us brown-skinned people. It's also more than perfectly obvious that the Paris attacks were just an excuse to let all this hate out; one particular commenter claimed that he'd spent a year in Morocco and knew that all Arabs are "liars, thieves and cheats" who would "rat out their mothers".

As I recall, most of these same people were condemning France when the then ancien, by today's standards, regime refused, most uncharacteristically, to help invade Iraq in 2003. But when it comes to fellow white Western “Christians” (not that France has much in the way of Christianity) being hit, then all the hate comes pouring out. I say Western because Russians or Serbs, for example, seem to be fair game.

I just realised yet again that being brown skinned is itself a crime these days, and that being racist against brown skinned people is perfectly socially acceptable, as was being racist against blacks and Jews a century ago. And, of course, knowledge is not something that is welcome. Knowledge is itself a shield against bigotry and racism, and one can’t have that. A two minute CNN or Fox news item is all that is necessary to tell these excellent ladies and gentlemen all they need to know about the world.

I should probably be thankful that my own online circles include people who are highly intelligent, egalitarian and knowledgeable, so that I can remind myself that not everybody is like that.

I do wonder, though, how say a young French Arab in the slums of Paris, already having been a lifelong sufferer from discrimination, say, might react when he reads something like that. And when he’s then told that he can strike back by joining a radical Islamic movement, I wouldn’t blame him if he did.

What’s even worse is the Hindunazis who, desperate for acceptance, will take the side of these racists, making the so-called “point” that it’s the evil Muslims who are responsible, and that they, themselves, are simon-pure innocents who are said racists’ natural allies. These Vichy Quislings merely solidify the racism of those excellent people, who now can see for themselves that at least some of the brown-skinned savages are eager to sell out their own kind.

I probably should stay away from the net for a day or two. This kind of thing makes me sad and leaves me with next to no hope for the future of the world.

Meanwhile, I’d like to say that I am disgusted by the tokenism and historical illiteracy of the sudden rash of French flags proliferating online.

Stay well, all of you.

The Marketing of ISIS as a Global Brand

Let me ask you a question.

Would you, gentle reader, go off to join a group on the other side of the world, whose main distinguishing mark seems to be its penchant for hacking off heads on camera, or burning people alive?

What was your answer?

I am probably correct if I say that, even while you probably react to the suggestion with horror, you equally have not the slightest hesitation in identifying exactly which group I am talking about. It’s the Islamic State, alias ISIS. Right?

Well, actually, you’re wrong. I was talking about the Sinaloa drug cartel^[1] of Mexico, which also has a penchant for hacking off heads^[2], gutting people with chainsaws, or burning them alive in oil drums. But why did you immediately imagine I was talking about ISIS?

It’s because of the relentless media coverage of ISIS, isn’t it? It’s because of the brand that is ISIS now, one which is immediately, at once, so recognisable that not only can it not be mistaken for anything else, others stand in danger of being mistaken for  it? Just like all petroleum jelly is, in popular consciousness, “Vaseline”, all toothpaste, in India at least, “Colgate”, and all vacuum cleaners in Britain are “Hoovers”, all Islamic, or suspected Islamic, terrorism is “ISIS” now, am I right?

Why do you think this is so? Why has ISIS reached a level of mass identification, instant brand-name recognition if you will, which other outfits like al Qaeda can only dream of? It doesn’t happen just like that, and it certainly isn’t the level of brutality that determines its familiarity in the popular consciousness. The aforementioned Mexican drug cartels could certainly give ISIS a run for its money in terms of sadistic brutality; and even other Islamic groups like al Shabaab of Somalia are at least as viciously brutal as ISIS when it comes to the treatment of captives, and in some ways significantly worse^[3]. But who knows about them?

There is one obvious answer: marketing.

I assume that anyone who reads this article is familiar already with the highly theatrical execution videos ISIS routinely puts online and which usually appear on sites like LiveLeak or Heavy.com. As part of my self-imposed task of satirising ISIS on my comic strip and discussing them more seriously on my blog, I do watch these videos, and I have come to some conclusions about them:

1. They are of two broad categories, meant for very different audiences. One set is clearly made for dissemination in the West, and that is the type familiar to everyone, the one where prisoners in orange jumpsuits are made to kneel while knife-wielding men in ninja suits, such as the ludicrously named "Jihad John", harangue the viewer in impeccable English. At first, the ultimate demise of the prisoner would not be shown on camera, and this led to accusations, which in at least one case were undoubtedly accurate^[4], that some or all of these videos were faked. Lately, the videos are actually beginning to show the full decapitations (or, in one recent case, death by tank tread), and I can assure you that they are anything but faked, and also that they are anything but easy watching.

However, the videos were, and are, remarkably theatrical, with carefully composed shots, multiple camera angles, often clearly made with multiple takes, and put together very slickly with fancy logos and music. The whole intent is to be eye catching, immediately recognisable theatre. One recent one I watched, for instance, was from Afghanistan, and this is what I had to say about it:

There seems to be a shortage of orange jumpsuits in Afghanistan. Maybe the CIA delivery channels are having problems with distribution. 

However, there are obviously enough black-ninja-suit-wearing ISIS men with equestrian skills, enough horses, enough morning-mist-shrouded Afghan mountainsides, and enough Hollywood production to compensate.

Also, evidently beheading has palled as a method of execution. Blowing up people en masse with dynamite is the bold new way to go.

However, even that video had the victims blown to pieces and body parts bouncing around in front of the cameras. ISIS has apparently decided that it has to achieve a higher level of brutal realism to gain attention.

The second set of videos, which have not changed since they first came out, were meant very much not for Western consumption. There are no speeches, no fancy camera angles, no musical soundtrack, no jumpsuits, no ninja outfits, and the camera – often obviously a mobile phone camera or a hand held camcorder – does not discreetly move away when the knife comes down. The videos are exceedingly brutal, were always exceedingly brutal, and nobody, at any time, could have had the slightest doubt that they were genuine.

If the intent of the first set of videos was to gain attention and branding, the purpose of the second is much simpler: terrorisation of actual, real opponents – people whom the makers of the video could actually be fighting – and to break their morale and will to resist. In other words, it is actual terrorism, the application of fear as a weapon, indistinguishable in its object from what George W Bush had hoped to accomplish in Iraq with his Shock and Awe.

Do you get what I am talking about here? The purpose of the second set of videos is psychological warfare. The purpose of the first set of videos? Brand recognition, on as broad a level as possible, among as many people as possible.

In other words, they're advertisements.

ISIS is coming to get you! Boo!

2. The first set of videos could not have been made without at least some level of professional expertise, including studio editing, and, if we are to believe some alleged “experts”, with the use of green screen technology. Someone is obviously providing substantial software services. Who is this “someone”? Was this “someone” recruited by the ISIS Human Resources from among the best Hollywood has to offer? Only in a universe where the Easter Bunny has dinner with Santa Claus at the restaurant run by the Tooth Fairy would this make some kind of believable argument.^[5]

3. Also, I am not exactly convinced that any band of literal cutthroats and desperadoes in the desert of Iraq can just get hold of orange jumpsuits and black ninja outfits, enough to equip a whole line of hostages and an equal number of knife wielders. I live in a reasonably modern country with a reasonably modern market, and I doubt I could get hold of a jumpsuit, orange or otherwise, easily – let alone those spiffy all-black outfits, not to mention horses.

Therefore, the general run of videos that are presented to the West by ISIS are, first, made for publicity and brand recognition, and, second, depend heavily on the kind of slick direction and production that is the hallmark of the average feature film.

Then there is also the matter of the ISIS flag. I have said once before that^[6]

In the course of drawing this strip, I realised – somewhat belatedly – something I think worth mentioning. You know that – as in today’s episode – I have frequently had cause to draw ISIS flags. Have you ever thought about this ISIS flag? It’s interesting, for more reasons than are immediately apparent.

For instance, it’s instantly recognisable, and nobody will ever mistake it for any other flag, anywhere. For another, it’s easy to copy and reproduce (fortunately for me, and, I imagine, other cartoonists), unlike, for example, the horrendously complex flag used by its parent organisation, Al Qaeda. In fact one doesn’t have to know a word of Arabic to be able to reproduce the ISIS flag, even from memory alone. I mean, even I can.

Now, isn’t this – from a marketing point of view – very interesting? An instantly recognisable logo, setting out one’s brand on the market, totally unique and easy to spread further, with ethnicity and linguistic ability no bar whatsoever? Lots of companies would kill for that kind of recognition…in a manner of speaking.

I wonder, somehow, if ISIS had the benefit of some top level marketing professionals in selecting its emblem. But that’s really too absurd, to imagine top level marketing professionals would design a jihadist group’s flag, for maximum impact. Right?

Right?

Or they can directly appeal to potential recruits with memes like this, which allegedly would make young men rush off to join:

You can add to this the ISIS magazine – yes, they have a magazine! – Dabiq; the alleged ISIS “currency”, mention of which was made on the so-called mainstream media before people realised it was too tall a story to swallow; and ISIS’ grandiose plans to take over everything between Spain to the western part of India, illustrated  by a map. A map! Even I could draw a map saying that, say, Botswana is my personal property. Doesn’t make it so.

Now, I’m going to ask you all something: suppose you had a new start up company, which was desperate to make a mark on the public consciousness: what might it do to do so? What might a marketing professional advise it to do?

-Create a very distinctive profile, so characteristic that anyone can instantly identify it? How might it do that, in a market teeming with competitors? One answer – go further than them. Do the same things, but more brazenly, more eye-catchingly, so that people identify you with the action, not your competition?

-Create an instantly identifiable logo, so distinctive that, for example, even other, totally unrelated things might be mistaken for your logo, just on the basis of the colour alone? A beard club outing, for instance?

-Make what might be called a huge IPO on the stock market? Now, I am a dedicated opponent of capitalism, so I have never owned a share and never will, but as far as I’m aware, the value of a company on the stock market has little or nothing to do with its real value. It’s mostly what the perception of it is, what people think that matters. The stock market is a grand Ponzi scheme, in other words, one long endless boondoggle. So if people think your new company is big and powerful and the up and coming thing, your stock will rise through the roof, even if the reality is nothing like that. In fact, the more mythical your capabilities get, as long as people continue to swallow the claims, the further your stock will soar.

Putting these together, the whole public perception of ISIS becomes one of a marketing phenomenon, which has turned heads all over the world, and which has obscured what the group really is, or rather was (because, like any other animal, it’s a plastic, amorphous, evolving organism).

So what is ISIS?

Let’s get the first thing out of the way: the core ISIS, the one in Syria and Iraq, is not a guerrilla organisation. It’s a conventional fighting force, which tends to fight fully conventional campaigns, something which actually renders it extraordinarily vulnerable to any opponent with the weapons and desire to strike it. There is next to no reason why the US, for example, with its allegedly greatest military force in the history of the world, the country which turned Saddam Hussein’s army to slag, can’t knock out lines of Toyotas driving serenely through the desert...if it really wants to. Only, maybe it doesn’t^[7].

Secondly, ISIS is, even as a conventional army, only a light infantry organisation. It has relatively little armour, artillery, or anything much in the way of air defence. It has no air force, no navy, no complex net of command and control (to have that third would be suicidal against any enemy with strong electronic warfare capabilities – command centres would be at once located and destroyed). As such, its fighting ability depends mostly on movement, tactics, and terrorising the enemy into fleeing...by, for instance, beheading prisoners, thus terrifying opponents by showing them exactly what will happen if they stay and fight.

As a military force, however, its abilities are strictly third grade against a powerful enemy. In comparison, I would like to cite the Sri Lankan Tamil insurgent group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE had a far greater level of control, armament, and organisation than ISIS has. It had not just artillery and a measure of popular support, but also a navy of speedboats and mini submarines, a worldwide fund collection and supply network, even an air force of Czech-made Zlin light aircraft converted for bombing. But even with all this, it was defeated and destroyed by the relatively tiny army of Sri Lanka, with almost no external help at all.

Can anyone explain why ISIS can’t be wiped out by an alleged international coalition while the much more heavily armed, equally fanatical, LTTE could be taken out by Sri Lanka alone?

Basically, then, ISIS is a light infantry force, which by all rights should have been destroyed a long time ago by the West, if it had really been interested in destroying it. Instead, it’s taken a space in the public consciousness as a kind of gigantic, unstoppable force of absolute evil and darkness, a kind of Orc army, against whom all hatches must be battened down, and everyone take to arms.

Really, and I mean this totally unironically, the ISIS marketing strategy should be taught in business schools. People could learn something from it.

But if the West isn’t interested in destroying ISIS, and if ISIS’ entire public image is an exercise in brand building, what does that mean?

The answer is obvious: build up a sufficiently evil opponent, a Black-and-White Peril if you will, and anything you do is all right in order to fight it. Suspend civil liberties, close down borders, declare martial law...invade and occupy nations on the other side of the planet...everything goes when it comes to fighting Absolute Evil of that magnitude.

Really, when you can create something like that, why would you ever want it to end? It’s the goose that lays the golden egg.

Now, there’s one very significant way in which ISIS has been dramatically more successful at drawing attention, even among Sunni Muslims, than al Qaeda. Al Qaeda, when all’s said and done, is a Sunni Arab organisation from West Asia with almost no members from anywhere else. Its appeal has never been particularly widespread, and other disaffected Muslim fundamentalist groups have preferred setting up their separate outfits rather than identify themselves with it. Even when they wanted to identify themselves with it, al Qaeda itself has often been chary of giving them official recognition. It’s like a very conservative, old style business.

ISIS, with its aggressive marketing strategy, has succeeded in unexpected ways. When Abu Bakr al Baghdadi declared himself the Caliph Ibrahim, he also automatically declared himself Amir ul Momineen, that is, the Commander of the Faithful, whom it is every “true” Muslim’s religious duty to obey. At one stroke, therefore, he broke through the West Asian Sunni Arab straitjacket of al Qaeda and made himself, potentially, the king of all the world’s Muslims. No wonder that one of the groups that reacted with the greatest rage to this announcement was...al Qaeda.

I’ll explain what this means. In simple terms, no Muslim jihadist group now needs to carefully build up its own identity, an image for itself, and attract support. All it has to do is swear allegiance to ISIS, declare itself an affiliate of the organisation or part thereof, and it immediately is guaranteed of attention and even of recruits. Not everyone can spend money to travel all the way to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS, and even if they want to, the very difficulty of the trip is often more than sufficient to squelch the dream and keep it in the realm of “if only...” But what if an ISIS franchise is right there next door – or you can set up one yourself?

How much does it cost to make those black flags anyway?^[8]

This is probably not what the people who had helped set up, arm, train and finance ISIS had anticipated. The franchise has broken the bounds of the intended market, and become so well known that exactly what happens to ultra-well-known consumer products like Reebok shoes or Louis Vuitton bags has happened to it.

In short, knockoffs.

At this point, it no longer really matters if the core ISIS is destroyed, for the survival of the brand. It does not even matter if the Caliph al Baghdadi is killed or is already dead or even if he never really existed. He’s become the Ronald McDonald, the Michelin Man, the Colonel Sanders...you get the idea. This is why ISIS is sprouting in countries as disparate as Bangladesh^[9] and Afghanistan, Nigeria and Somalia.

Normally, then, one would anticipate a certain amount of disquiet, even incipient panic, in the capitals of the west; a desire to try and dial back the demons they unleashed. But there seems to be no such thing. Instead, they are intent on their farcical bombing of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, which seems to be more about destroying Syrian infrastructure and limiting Iranian influence than about fighting ISIS; and they’re gearing up further towards confronting Russia.

It would seem then that they think ISIS still has a lot of potential as a brand, one can still turn a dividend for stock holders.

I will close with this prediction: In two years’ time, at the most, we will hear talk of “moderate ISIS” the West can deal with, people who share “democratic values” and can be “partnered with.” We will see them being armed and trained, increasingly overtly, and unleashed on recalcitrant nations with Muslim populations around the world...like, oh, Russia or China, for example.

Don’t believe me? It’s already happened with the Taliban, it’s happened to al Qaeda^[10].

With ISIS it’s as inevitable as the rising sun.

Sources:

^[1] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/you-need-know-short-brutal-6073989

^[2] http://www.latinopost.com/articles/6482/20140701/6-most-infamous-crimes-committed-by-mexican-cartels-six-terrifying-zetas-sinaloa-murder-cartel.htm

^[3] http://bill-purkayastha.blogspot.in/2014/08/the-worlds-most-dangerous-place.html

^[4] http://bill-purkayastha.blogspot.in/2015/02/burn.html

^[5] http://off-guardian.org/2015/11/07/the-idiotic-media-version-of-isis-are-we-losing-our-critical-thinking/

^[6] https://ragheadthefiendlyterrorist.wordpress.com/2015/09/14/the-great-big-isis-movie-extravaganza-part-xx/

^[7] http://bill-purkayastha.blogspot.in/2014/06/drone-man-told-nation.html?m=1

^[8] http://bill-purkayastha.blogspot.in/2015/05/inviting-isis-in.html

^[9] http://bill-purkayastha.blogspot.in/2015/09/isis-in-bangladesh.html

^[10] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/david-petraeus-pitches-plan-al-qaeda-isis-fight-article-1.2343963

 Copyright B Purkayastha 2015

A Letter from Hindunazistan

It’s time again to find out what’s been happening in the great and wonderful Republic of Hindunazistan.

A few weeks ago, in the last episode of this series, I’d said something about a major state election which Narendra Modi was on the road to losing. I’d also told you lot that it wouldn’t have been a major election, and it wouldn’t have been Modi who lost it, but for the fact that he campaigned as the face of his party (the BJP) in the state, making the election a de facto referendum on his rule.

As you’ll know by now, that rule, now well into its second year, has not exactly produced the promised results. In fact, as even Hindunazi ideologue Arun Shourie – an acerbic writer whose wit I have always enjoyed while disagreeing with him on just about everything under the sun – says, the BJP’s rule has been “the Congress plus a cow”.

The Congress refers to the previous, totally venal, regime of the Congress Party, which was so dysfunctional that even people who despised the Hindunazi ethos voted for the BJP in 2014, desperate for a change. As for the cow – well, as the BJP’s promised Golden Age recedes further into the distance with each passing day, it  has fallen back on hardline Hindu fascism, as symbolised by its obsession with the cow.

If you haven’t read my previous article on Hindunazistan, you might as well go and do it at this point, because I’ve talked about the cow in that in some detail.

That election I talked about was in the state of Bihar. It was at one time the heartland of empires which ruled the Indian subcontinent from Afghanistan to the Bay of Bengal. Today, though, it’s a highly overpopulated and desperately poor province, plagued by underdevelopment, illiteracy, and endemic crime and lawlessness. Under a succession of venal political leaders who exploited caste and religious divides for their own purposes, the condition of the state grew so bad that people began leaving in droves to work as carpenters, cobblers, barbers and labourers all over the rest of the country – only to be resented and often attacked by others who claimed they were taking away jobs that rightfully belonged to the locals.

Does this sound familiar from elsewhere in the world?

The situation in Bihar probably reached its nadir in the 1990s when a populist politician called Laloo Prasad Yadav took power. A showman if there ever was one – Donald Trump could take tips from him – Laloo Prasad Yadav had only one single saving grace; he was, and is, a committed secularist and an opponent of Hindu fascism. He put a stop to the savage communal riots that ravaged Bihar in the 1970s and 80s at regular intervals and totally smashed the Hindu right in the state. On the other hand, he allowed corruption to reach unprecedented levels, and criminals from his Yadav caste ran amok with impunity. By the late 1990s to the early 2000s, Bihar was under what was called “jungle law”, where kidnapping for ransom was an industry, village workshops made illicit weaponry and sold them to criminals, and the rule of the government existed not at all.

Laloo Prasad Yadav

Laloo Yadav was at the time in jail, after he was implicated in a major scam. When he was forced to step down as the state’s chief minister, he – in a typically jaw-dropping act of audacity – put his semiliterate wife, Rabri Devi, in power in his place. Rabri Devi was, naturally, a rubber stamp – Laloo Yadav and his coterie of bureaucrats ruled through her. As before, there was peace between the religions, but in every other way the situation got worse and worse.

At last the people of Bihar had had enough. They voted out Laloo Yadav’s party, the RJD, and put into power an alliance between the BJP and the JD(U) led by one Nitish Kumar. It should be noted that this would not have happened unless substantial sections even among the Muslims (who form 15% of the population of Bihar and had of course supported Laloo Yadav) and other non-Yadav castes had changed sides. Laloo Yadav’s misrule had alienated so many people that everyone assumed he was finished.

You couldn’t imagine just how much they were wrong.

Meanwhile, Nitish Kumar had taken over Bihar. There is something very strange about Nitish Kumar: as far as anyone can make out, he is one of that almost mythical species, an honest politician. Like Laloo Yadav, with whom he has had a long friendship, he is also a secularist. And, unlike Laloo, he has no tolerance for corruption and crime.

Nitish Kumar

Under Nitish Kumar, then, the endemic Bihari lawlessness began, slowly, to reverse itself. Kidnapping for ransom stopped. Development, albeit in dribs and drabs, finally reached villages which had never seen piped water or electric lights before. Nitish Kumar had a BJP deputy chief minister, Sushil Modi (no relative of Narendra Modi) who made no attempt to stoke up religious passions and in fact helped in the development agenda. Bihar, if it didn’t quite prosper, was no longer sinking into the morass.

And then it was that Narendra Modi became the BJP’s candidate for the prime minister’s post in Delhi.

I have said that Nitish Kumar was a secularist. Narendra Modi, as I have said in every single one of my articles mentioning the man, is anything but. Nitish Kumar may have been, as he has been accused of doing, looking to dump the alliance with the BJP anyway; but in any case Narendra Modi was not acceptable to him as the prime minister. He withdrew from the alliance, the BJP won a huge number of votes – and seats – from Bihar in the national elections, and Narendra Modi came to power in Delhi with a huge majority.

It would seem that Nitish Kumar had gambled and lost.

Meanwhile, Laloo Yadav had been released from prison on bail, and had apparently been doing some hard thinking of his own. He and Nitish Kumar went back a long way; the latter had even, as I recall, gone to get Laloo’s mother’s “blessings” before taking on her son in the elections which he’d won. So it wasn’t exactly a handshake across barbed wire when the two parties, the JD(U) and the RJD, formed a “Grand Alliance” along with the remnants of the Congress Party to fight the elections this year.

[There is another extremely venal Yadav politician, Mulayam Singh Yadav, who heads the Samajwadi Party in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh. Mulayam Singh, who has a history of canoodling with the Hindunazis, was given an opportunity to join the alliance too, but refused. His reasoning probably went this way: if he joined it, then Laloo Prasad Yadav’s chances of winning would improve. If Laloo Prasad Yadav won, he would be better placed than Mulayam Singh Yadav for the position of leadership of the Yadav caste. So it would be better if Laloo Prasad Yadav lost. It was a typical bit of cynicism by Mulayam Singh, whom nobody now trusts at all.]

Meanwhile the BJP had also tacked on an alliance of a disparate collection of a few small caste-based non-Hindunazi parties, which it assumed would attract the votes of the castes they represented.

Apart from all these, there was a Muslim party of such overwhelming lack of significance that even Muslims laughed at it, and a small Maoist presence. So this was the lineup going up to the elections, which were to be held in multiple phases in October and November.

Now, remember this: despite Nitish Kumar’s best efforts, Bihar is still a desperately poor state with abysmal levels of development. Its contribution to the national economy is at best negligible. The Biharis are perfectly aware of this, and know that there’s still a long way to go – but, significantly, they know now that this is something that is now possible. It’s not as though they’re condemned forever to wallow in the slough of despond. And, as a corollary, on the national level, who rules Bihar is not that important. It’s just another state, or should be.

Therefore, the strategy that the BJP should have attempted was to focus on development. It had a perfectly good candidate in Sushil Modi, who had done as much as Nitish Kumar to help the state recover from the misrule of Laloo Yadav and his predecessors, and who, besides, had no interest in sectarian rabble-rousing. Instead, in a decision as predictable as it was moronic, it unleashed Narendra Modi on the state.

Narendra Modi

Why was this predictable? Because, as I’ve said in past articles, Narendra Modi is virtually the dictator of the BJP now. He’s shunted aside all his seniors and rivals in the party, and rules by Führerprinzip through a small coterie, which controls all access to him. This coterie is headed by a particularly toxic individual called Amit Shah, who is despised by many in his own party but who has Narendra Modi’s total trust. 

Amit Shah

Narendra Modi, as Führer, does not delegate. His style of ruling is 100% top down. He’s been set up to the admiring gaze of his acolytes, the Modi Bhakts as they’re called, as though he’s god almighty, and nothing is impossible to him. That he should yield centre stage to a mere underling like Sushil Modi was nothing he would countenance.

And why was this moronic? The people of Bihar have no interest in communal violence. They’ve suffered terribly from it in the past, and then learned to live in religious harmony for a generation. It has been 26 years since there was last a communal riot in Bihar, and, as a Bihari woman said, all she wanted was that her children should be able to grow up in peace. And in Laloo Yadav they had a man who was, whatever else he might be, a hundred per cent secular; while in Nitish Kumar they had another man who was not only secular but also honest and in favour of development. Why on earth would they look elsewhere unless given excellent reasons to do so?

But Narendra Modi gave them no reason to do so. He unleashed what has been called the ugliest, most communal campaign in years. He informed the Biharis that “a particular community” (meaning, Muslims) would siphon off their jobs if they voted for the Grand Alliance. Amit Shah went one further – Pakistan, he said, would celebrate with firecrackers if the BJP lost. The party also loaded local newspapers with advertisements about the cow and how it had been insulted by Laloo Yadav and Nitish Kumar.

Meanwhile, the media, which is these days more of a public spectacle than anything serious, went to town pumping up the election as a referendum on Modi, that it was a make or break affair, that it would decide if the “Modi wave” was still on, and the like. It would not, of course, have done so without at least partial BJP encouragement. The election was all about Modi’s ego, and the BJP wanted nobody to forget who was in charge.

In other words, all this was exactly what it should not have done.

All this, of course, was information anyone could access. And anyone with half a brain and the analytical ability of a grasshopper could have seen the way the wind was blowing and come up with exactly the same conclusion as I did, that is, the Grand Alliance was on the way to wiping the floor with the BJP – and that when it did, it would be Modi’s defeat, more than anything else. Remember, I had said weeks ago that the BJP would lose.

Somehow, though, this seemed to have totally escaped the attention of all the opinion pollsters and the news channels. They all – with one exception – predicted a victory for the BJP and its caste ally parties. The one exception was a poll which couldn’t even, according to the people who carried it out, find any major channel willing to publicise it...even though it had got the figures almost a hundred per cent correct.

Then the results came in: the Grand Alliance swept the polls, getting over a two-thirds majority; the BJP’s allies were wiped out, and the BJP itself saw its seats almost halved. Among the rest, the Maoists got two seats, and the Muslim party I mentioned got, predictably, nothing at all.

And the media was shocked. Shocked, I tell you! How could this ever have happened that everyone got it all so wrong?

The message from the people of Bihar was so unmistakable that one would have thought even the Hindunazis couldn’t but see it. They told the BJP, in no uncertain terms, “Please stop treating us like fools. Stop telling us how to live our lives, what to eat and wear, whom we can or can’t fall in love with, what movies or books we can read or can’t. Stop trying to divide us by religion. We’ve been there before and we don’t want to go back there again. You were voted to power to govern. Go back to governing, or you’ll find that when the next national election comes round in 2019, you’ll be tossed out on your ear in Delhi just like you were here. You have been warned.”

Do you think the Hindunazis took the warning?

One of the most illuminating ways of judging Hindunazi mood is to read the comment sections of online news sites, such as Outlook magazine. Hindunazis are hugely overrepresented online. For one thing, they have specifically targeted young urban professionals for brainwashing, because of course those are the people who can be of most use to them and who are already invested in the Hindunazi pro-capitalist, pro-Big Business ethos. For another, Modi has a troll army whose only function is to shout down all dissent online.

So this was the response of the trolls, when they’d finally got over their shell-shock: the blame was to be put on the Muslims, who voted together against the BJP. That the Muslims form 15% of the population of the state, and are concentrated in only a few areas, wasn’t relevant. Nor was it that the Muslim party was wiped out. It was somehow the Muslims’ fault, because they all voted together. And it was also the Hindus’ fault, because they didn’t unitedly vote for “their” party, the BJP, but for the Grand Alliance, even though said Grand Alliance was almost totally comprised of Hindus as well. Solution: the Hindus, obviously, will need to be made more “united”, that is, more fascistic, more driven by fear, more amenable to do exactly what the Führer tells them.

Do you think this is a strategy which will work?

Obviously, in a party now run on Führerprinzip, the Führer himself can’t be blamed for anything, and since he depends on his coterie, the coterie can’t be to blame either. So the BJP circled wagons, muttered to each other, and came out with a response that “everybody” was to blame for the debacle. As critics at once pointed out, this basically meant that nobody was responsible. After all, you can’t punish everyone.

So farcical had this become that a section of senior leaders in the BJP, who had been shunted aside, made their dissent known. Most of them had held top positions in the last government the Hindunazis had held in Delhi, from 1998 to 2004. The prime minister of the time had been a genial buffer named Atal Behari Vajpayee, who, despite being a Hindunazi, preferred consensus to rule by diktat, had excellent personal relations even with the Communists, and who had even decided not to send troops to Iraq to help in the Amerikastani invasion after the Congress Party had protested. Today, Vajpayee is old and decrepit and nobody knows exactly what his thoughts are on anything, but his former deputies are clamouring loudly – and accurately – that the current course followed by the party will only bring disaster. In this, whatever their motives, and bringing Modi down is certainly one of them, they are undoubtedly correct.

And, of course, this was too much truth for the Hindunazis to handle. They’d managed to smear Arun Shourie (he of the “Congress plus cow” comment) by claiming he was no longer a member of the BJP; but they couldn’t blow off these others so easily. So they came out with a statement saying that these sentiments “should not have been aired in public”. Of course, the very idea of making the statement was to air it in public, so that everyone knew that there was dissent in the BJP. But the BJP no longer tolerates dissent.

Meanwhile, as I said earlier, more and more intellectuals have been turning in their public awards as a form of protest against the increasing fascist intolerance in the country. The figure I cited last time was forty; it now stands at well over four hundred. There was no way the Hindunazis could ignore it. They could react in two ways: they could either mend their ways, go back to governance, and drop the radical Hindunazi agenda like a hot potato. Or they could, you know, call the protestors anti-nationals, traitors whose only purpose was to defame India in the eyes of the world.

Do you have the slightest doubt which course they adopted?

The day before the Bihar verdict was out, a superannuated Bollywood actor and failed quiz show host, Anupam Kher, who has never hidden his Hindunazism, conducted a “march” in Delhi to protest against these dissenters and traitors. He got together a full five hundred people, including other failed actors, third line celebrities, and common hoodlums, and conducted a procession up to the President’s official residence. The media covered it like it was the most important event of the year, but it was only a small procession of foul-mouthed, abusive Hindunazis who taunted and insulted female journalists and the like. After the Bihar verdict, Anupam Kher vanished from public view like a frog slithering into pond scum.

The Hindunazis have not, naturally, learnt their lesson. In the largely Hindu, but also very egalitarian and cosmopolitan, state of Karnataka, they are now leading “protests” against the state government’s move to honour the memory of a former king, Tipu Sultan. Tipu Sultan, who died fighting against the British colonial imperialists, is in the Hindunazi view a tyrant who oppressed Hindus. In reality, he had granted concessions to Hindu temples and contributed large sums to their upkeep, but when did reality ever matter to Nazis anywhere? All this campaign – which has included death threats to people including senior actor Girish Karnad, a Hindu – has done is to disgust people even more.

At this point, I will do something that is not in character. I will tell the Hindunazis exactly how they can turn this whole shambles round and still somehow salvage the situation before they drive off a cliff. I’m generous like that, but I’m also perfectly safe in assuming that not only will they never read this, if they do, they’ll disregard all advice coming from a despised leftie like me. So here goes:

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Dear Prime Minister Modi

Let me remind you that you were elected on a plank of development, progress, and anti-corruption, not on an agenda of spreading Hindu fascism. It will not do to assert, as one of your minions did some time ago, that since the people voted for you they’ve given blanket permission to do as you like. If you had campaigned on a plank of Hindu fascism, you would never have got anywhere near power. I am sure you are aware of that.

Let me further remind you that you were elected by people across India. You are not a rubber stamp of a political dynasty, one who has never won even a municipal election, like your contemptible predecessor Manmohan Singh. You are a politician who has fought his way up. You know how easy it is to fall.

And fall you most certainly will, unless you immediately change not just your course, but your very method of governing. This is not, as you may have discovered, a nation which will be dictated to. People resent being told what to do, especially when they also find that those doing the telling have not made the slightest attempt to fulfil the promises that they have made.

So this is what you must do:

Sack the coterie around you. Get rid of them once and for all, most importantly Amit Shah. He is an individual so despicable that getting rid of him alone will fill people with relief and a measure of gratitude towards you. It shouldn’t be so difficult for you; you’ve certainly used enough of your former colleagues and subordinates as disposable stepping stones on your path to power. Do the names of, say, Gordhan Zadaphia, Mayaben Kodnani or Haren Pandya ring a bell?

Once you have got rid of the coterie, re-engage with your party. Start talking to people, including party members. Remember that democracy is about consensus. Even the opposition parties have a role to play; and if you talk to them, discuss things with them, you can even sow dissension among them and prevent them getting together. At the moment, all you’re doing is driving sworn enemies into each other’s arms, to band together against you.

Third, please get rid of the Hindunazi fringe. They do you no good whatsoever, they don’t translate into votes, and they are actively losing you support among the vast majority of Hindus, who are, and will remain, probably the single most liberal set of religious believers in the world. Remember what the people of Bihar told you? Do you want to hear all the people of India say the same thing?

Fourth, kindly get rid of the troll army. Insulting people online does you no good, because the trolls are not only pathetically inept, they are also useless. Till today, only a tiny fraction of Indians go online at all, and of those who do, most don’t even look at news sites or the contents of online debate fora. All these trolls do is tell you that you have a much greater amount of support than you actually do.

Fifth, stop trying to influence the media. You’ve canoodled with them long enough to know that they won’t get you votes. And when they fail to get you votes, your minions insult them, thus ensuring their support to you next time round will be less than wholehearted.

Sixth, please stop spending almost all your time abroad and get down to work in this country. You weren’t elected to spend the next five years going on jaunts at taxpayers’ cost all over the earth. Even your supporters are beginning to look at this behaviour with consternation.

Lastly, learn to be humble. You are not the owner of the nation. Still less are you a Grand Leader of any kind. The more you set yourself up as one, the worse the consequences when you fail.

I say all this in the knowledge that you will do none of these things, and, as such, will doom your party to further degradation and defeat.

Yours cordially,

Bill P.