We must save our Republic: Dr Parakala Prabhakar (2024)

Dr Parakala Prabhakar is a leading political economist and social critic. He has openly stated in his book ' The Crooked Timber Of New India' that he sees it his duty as a citizen of India to point out the wrongs committed by the Modi regime. In this interview with Mathrubhumi, Dr Parakala explains why he considers the Hindutva forces fundamentally antithetic to the Indian republic.'' We may soon hear the dog whistles from the ramparts of the Red Fort,'' cautions Dr Prabhakar.

Excerpts from the interview:

You are making it crystal clear in the introduction to your book that you are fulfilling your commitment to the constitution , your adherence to the founding principles of the Republic by writing this book, which is a scathing critique of the Modi regime. Let me quote from the book: '' Mine is an unabashedly critical voice. It is , unrepentantly, a dissenting note.'' What led you to take on the Modi regime so boldly and forthrightly?

You see, when you go to a doctor, he would examine you and tell you straight away what is wrong with you. If you have a cardiac problem he will tell you that directly. He won't tell you that your liver is good, your kidney is good etc, etc. He will simply tell you the diagnosis. I think we should also do the same. We are political and social diagnosticians. We must tell the society what is wrong.

The economy has gone into a bad shape in spite of the propaganda put out by the government in the social media. They have claimed that they have achieved 7.2% growth and that India is the fastest growing economy in the world. We have to unpack this. During the pandemic the economy really got battered. The economy was already suffering from the demonetisation. The Pandemic worsened the scenario.Any growth from that low base any small achievement will look big. So, we have to place this 7.2% growth against this backdrop.What does this 7.2% consist of? If you look at the expenditure in public administration one of the major heads is government expenditure on salaries, defence sector etc. This has come to 7.2% which is phenomenally higher than it used to be. What is more alarming is that the manufacturing sector contributes only 1.3%. If you are happy with the manufacturing sector accounting for 1.3% may God save this country. Of course They can propagate this. But if they start believing their own propaganda then that will be problematic.

Remember the fact that in spite of the tall claims by the government the private sector is reluctant to invest. And then coupled with that is the flight of the foreign institutional investors from the country. The number of people who relinquish Indian citizenship and leave the country is also on the rise from 2014 onwards. We have added 75 million people to the ranks of poverty. the first ever increase since the 1990s. This is 60%of the global addition to poverty. Look at the youth unemployment. It is somewhere around 23%. And here we are in the company of nations like Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria. Youth unemployment in Bangladesh is half of what is there in India. If people are not worried about this, if the govt is not worried about this there is something which is fundamentally wrong.

On the political side see how the elected governments in many states are toppled through horse trading. The BJP is determined to have power by hook or crook. The federal structure of the nation is facing a huge threat from this regime. Centre -state relationship has been worsening for quite some time. But there is no shortage of hype. Earlier one kilometre of four-lane road was one kilometre. Now it is four kilometres. Earlier team India consisted of the PM and the chief ministers.Now it is only the Prime Minister. The social fabric is fragile.Alloting more funds to thepromotion of Sanskrit than the other living languages.The Dharma Sansad calling for genocide, cow lynching - it is a multi pronged attack on the Indian Republic.

Trojan Horse and the Faustian Bargain

When you say that the timber is crooked , that means it has to be dismantled in order to have the straight timber. Do you exactly mean it?

Absolutely! The crooked timber has to be hived off. Otherwise what is now a dog whistle by the Dharma Sansad, you will hear such calls, such slogans from the ramparts of the Red Fort. That day is not far off if this government is not changed.

Dismantling the present regime will happen only in an electoral battle. So, are you calling out to the public that they have to take a final call?

My point is that if you confine yourself only to the electoral battle then the fight won't be complete. Look at the Karnataka verdict, the BJP has not lost its support base in the state. They had received 36 percent votes in 2018. They have retained the same percent of votes this time too. The political geography of karnataka has not changed. Coastal Karnataka stays with BJP. Bengaluru city and the surrounding areas remain loyal to BJP. So, if we are not thinking of excising , taking away the poison that has been injected into the veins of a large scale educated middle class population of India, who are not bothered about the sufferings of the poor, about the price hike in petrol and other essential goods then the republic can't be saved. BJP knows very well that their followers are not bothered about the economic crisis, they are bothered about the Ram temple construction in Ayodhya, they are bothered about whether the Kerala Story is screened, whether Kashi Vishwanath corridor is renovated or not, whether the senkol is installed in the Parliament or not.They are made to believe that these are the significant things in India. This is the danger. If we confine ourselves to the electoral battles then the victories will be ephemeral and temporal. let us not get complacent. Apart from the electoral battles there is a huge amount of work by the civil society waiting to be done in order to save the republic.

There are two significant phrases that you use in your book- the Trojan Horse and the Faustian bargain. The allusion is that BJP ushered in hindutva deceptively into the regime. You also point out that BJP gained legitimacy because the secular parties that joined hands with it didn't realise what kind of an animal they were dealing with. But P Sundarayya , the CPM General Secretary in 1975, resigned from his post when his party took the decision to support the JP movement along with the RSS and the Jan Sangh. Do you think that the other leaders simply failed to foresee what was coming?

It is wonderful that you brought this up. Quite often people tend to forget all these historical facts. The days after the partition provided the most fertile ground for the Sangh Parivar to flourish in India. They had charismatic leaders like Golwalker, Syama prasad Mukherjee, Deendayal Upadhyaya and Balraj Madhok. The atmosphere was intensely tense with communal conflicts. But the Sangh Parivar couldn't flourish because the leaders of Congress and other secular parties could size up the danger and tackle it efficiently and successfully. These leaders were clear about the ideological battle and saw to it that people were up to it. But now the secular political parties are just sleep walking from one election to the other. In between they don't do any ideological work. But the Sangh Parivar does it and does it diligently. Away from the political spectacles, away from the public glare, away from the electoral politics they keep on working among the public and instil their ideology. It's arduous, difficult and unrewarding work. This kind of work is missing from the secular forces.

Now let us come to the Faustian Bargain. There has been a school of thought in India that believes India is a land of Hindus. They were very shy and were not that enthusiastic in speaking about these things in public.

Narendra Modi's campaign in 2014 was not on the plank of majoritarianism. In fact he said that the fight is against corruption and poverty by the Hindus and theMuslims together. But then they dropped these slogans and exposed their majoritarian agenda unabashedly. That is why I use the phrase ' Trojan Horse.'

The Secular Narrative In Crisis

In your book you have stated that the hindutva forces couldn't flourish during and after the partition days in spite of the fact that the ground was immensely fertile with communal tensions and the presence of towering personalities like Golwalker, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Balraj madhock and Karpatri Maharaj. They couldn't succeed because there were great leaders like Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar and Patel on the other side. So, don't you think that the absence of credible , great leaders among the opposition parties today add up to the strength of the hindutva forces?

Yes. It is a problem. You see after the partition the communal forces couldn't succeed due to various factors including the assassination of Gandhi. But later onwards, the secular forces have been under the illusion that these forces have been completely vanquished. A kind of complacency has taken over the political class. The result was that the ideological battle was forgotten.

Don't you think that part of the blame is on Congress. The Congress high command from the time of Indira Gandhi concentrated on the centralisation of power. The regional leaders were systematically sidelined. This paved the way for the authoritarian tendencies which the BJP found quite suitable to their own agenda. What is your take on this?

Congress' policy has contributed to the present deterioration to a large extent. However, the other secular political formations also can't wash their hands of this crisis. Almost all political parties other than the Congress and the RJD of Lalu Prasad Yadav have broken bread with BJP. That gave the much needed legitimacy to the BJP. They simply didn't know the kind of animal they were dealing with. BJP was very cautious in not exposing their true nature. They used to say that they were also secular. They claimed that they were genuinely secular while other parties were pseudo secular. Then the narrative was controlled by the secular parties. Secularism was the central point of discourse then. It is no longer the central point. Today every party is competing hard to prove their hindu credentials. Look at how Rahul Gandhi says that he is janeu dhari brahman.

Yeah. Shashi Tharoor wrote a book titled 'Why I am a Hindu.' It is no longer why I am secular.' The AAP's silence during the CAA protests and the Delhi riots also tells the same narrative. RSS must be feeling happy that whichever the party it is hindutva all the way?

Exactly. But I must strike a note of caution here. We have to accept that this is no mean achievement on the part of the communal forces. It has come about as a result of long years of thankless, unrewarding work put in by hundreds of thousands of dedicated swayam sevaks. Let us not dismiss that. The RSS pracharaks went from village to village leading a simple and frugal life to achieve the goal. In order to counter that anything less than that kind of a work won't be sufficient.The Opposition parties today don't have any such team of workers who can counter the RSS ideology at the ground level. That is why I keep on saying that although the electoral victories are important we shouldn't be complacent in the ideological battle at the grassroots.

The other political parties are simply sleepwalking from one election to another. They have this impression that political outcome is in a vacuum. Political outcomes don't occur in a vacuum. It is the result of socio-economic causes and consciousness. If these two factors are missing, if the opposition parties are thinking there are shortcuts then the republic is in for a much deeper crisis.

Your observations remind me of a conversation I had with RB Sreekumar, the former DGP of Gujarat. He told me that it was the shortsightedness of the Congress ,which failed to see the long term impact of the Gujarat riots that led to the evolution of Modi as a national leader. Do you concur with this view?

Of course, the congress was not serious about the Gujarat riots. They couldn't unravel the mystery behind the Godhra train accident. Even Though Lalu Prasad Yadav , the then Railway minister had appointed the Justice Banerjee commission to look into the incident, the final report of the commission was not made public. That was a very clear sign of capitulation. It had started much earlier. Remember the opening of the Babri mosque to the hindutva forces in 1986 and the launching of an election campaign by Rajiv Gandhi from Ayodhya in 1989.

Do you think that the arrival of Modi in Gujarat in 2001 as the CM candidate of BJP and his gradual evolution into the present stature was part of a mega plan by the RSS?

We don't have any first hand information in this regard. But if you look at the events from outside they all add up logically. It very much seems so, it very much looks like that. They always have their strategies well. We shouldn't forget the fact that they didn't speak about hindutva in 2014. Then their campaign was based on development. Modi spoke of inclusive growth. It was development all the way. I have used the metaphor of a rocket launch to bring this out. The actual payload was hindutva. All these slogans were expendable launch vehicles to put the payload of a majoritarian political creed into orbit. As the actual payload takes off , they fall away as debris. They are no longer worried about the 300 lives lost in one of the worst train accidents in recent times in Odisha. The Railway minister is not held accountable. The bhakts say that he is a brilliant technocrat and should continue the good works initiated by him. But who is there to answer for the loss of precious human lives? The minister shouts ' Bharat Mata ki jai' over a megaphone at the site of the disaster. This is the way the BJP regime is responding to such a disaster.

Economy: The Hype And The Reality

Now coming back to one of the points you raised on the unwillingness of the private sector to invest in India , let me bring your attention to the hype that was constructed around the Modi regime's expectations that more industries will flow into India from China which is allegedly reeling under the authoritarian Xi Jinping regime. But the hype didn't materialise into reality. What would you attribute to this ?

There are clear reasons for this. The foreign Institutional Investors are not happy with the prevailing situation in India. Secondly, there is a huge shortage of skilled hands in India. I have a chapter on this issue in my book. In addition to the highest youth unemployment we also have the highest skill gap. The trained workforce in India is only 5%. In South Korea it is 96%. It is 68% in the UK, 75% in Germany, 52% in the US and 80 % in Japan. In any economy that is doing well the trained workforce will be big in number. The jobs which should migrate from China are highly skilled jobs. All these factors stand in the way of India in leveraging the demographic dividend. 54% of the Indian population is young today. Most of them are not skilled. This results in low skilled youth working in low skilled segments earning less . So, the demographic dividend is squandered, the so-called political stability is squandered, two successive mandates are squandered. The 9 years of the Modi regime have not done anything substantially good in the country. A few individuals are favoured and they enjoy the protection and sustenance by the government.

This regime has pushed 32 million people from the ranks of the middle class into poverty. People argue that it is because of the pandemic. China had much more brutal and longer lockdowns than India but China has lost only one million middle class people into poverty. If you want me to be proud of 120 or 130 billionaires in the country, what about those millions of people who have been marginalised?

The introduction of GST has resulted in expanding the net of indirect taxes and more and more poor people are paying more taxes. On the other hand the Modi regime has cut down the corporate tax. Don't you think that this government is talking from balcony to balcony?

Certainly! The increase in indirect taxes burdens the poor. The whole talk about poor people not paying taxes is sheer humbug. Everybody who lives in India pays taxes. The poor pay a much larger amount of taxes than the rich people. This has to be drilled into the minds of the people. The proponents of the neo liberal economic policies( NLEP) want us to let rich people become rich,they say that the wealth creators must be protected and then the wealth would trickle down to the other people. This so-called Washington consensus has been completely discredited . The NLEP has become irrelevant now. Otherwise why should the US regime under Trump spend one trillion dollar package to boost up the economy? That only signals the departure from the neo liberal consensus.What is the politics of this neo liberal economic policy? The claim is that wealth creation among the rich will lead to a better economy where the poor people will be the beneficiaries. The political counterpart to this is the hindutva philosophy which treats the people of other religions as secondary class citizens. The Hindu majority will look after all others.

Hindutva is based on the sanatana dharma which in fact excluded the dalits from its periphery. Chartur Varna doesn't even accept the existence of dalits. They are the outcastes. And they claim to be the embodiment of tolerance. Isn't it hypocritical ?

Very much! What about the women and children? Hindutva is the exact political counterpart to the neo liberal economic philosophy. This only means that they are not interested in economic and political equality. This is nothing but dragging India back to the dark ages. This is the dangerous economic and political philosophy operating in India.

You were referring to the confusion prevailing among the BJP and the Modi regime about the economic philosophy . But as we go deeper it emerges that they are very sure about what they do. How do you look at it?

I would say that they don't have a cohesive economic policy. Because , when the BJP was founded in the 1980 its founding creed was Gandhian Socialism.Then that was dropped. Then in the 1990s they opposed the neo liberal policies tooth and nail. Today the Prime Minister is saying that the government has no business in doing business. They are all for privatisation. Privatisation is not reform. If Visakha Steel is not doing well , you go for reform. But selling is not reform. They want us to believe that a government getting out of major strategic industrial terrain is reform. Tomorrow they may even get out of defence. We should be aware of what they intend to do in future. That is why I keep on saying if the present dispensation is going to retain power in 2024 it is going to be an apocalypse for India. I am not exaggerating it at all. I just want to repeat the message, today what the Dharma Sansad does from Haridwar( the dogwhistle for genocide) the samething will be said from the ramparts of the RedFort. Don't underestimate that kind of a possibility.

Freedom after the Speech

Earlier you had mentioned about the miscalculations of the non BJP parties in joining hands with the BJP to share power. You said that they gave the saffron party the much needed legitimacy. But you yourself had broken bread with them even though it was for a short period only. What made you want to be a part of the saffron gang?

One reason for my stint with BJP was that for various reasons I had to get out of the Congress. And I did not want to be then a part of the regional political platform. That time the kind of impression that was generated about BJP in the public was that the party was no longer the Hindutva platform it used to be. It was propagated that the BJP under Vajpayee was moving towards Nehruvian socialism. But it doesn't mean that I am someone who never makes mistakes.

And I think your proximity to Narasimha Rao was not digested by the Congress high command and you were hounded out those days?

Yes. The people who were with Narasimha Rao were harassed. I was also one of the victims. But as soon as I realised that this is not the platform that I sought, I quit the saffron camp. In fact in Andhra Pradesh we also tried to launch an alternative to both the Congress and the TDP. I mean the experiment with Praja Rajyam. But that failed.

In your conversations and writings you have stated that freedom of speech means not just the freedom to speak but freedom after the speech. So, how has been your life after the publication of this speech?

Publishing this book was not at all easy. I do not want to reveal the names. But very reputed publications refused to bring out the book when they saw the content. Nobody said that they wouldn't publish the book. Nobody would say that.They would say that they need some more time. They would tell us that we could wait till 2024. That was the most polite way of telling no. Then came my present publisher , who was not at all afraid of the consequences.

After the publication I received some vague threats over the phone, but nothing significant. But on the other hand I have received huge appreciation and endorsements from various quarters. When we had the Bengaluru launch, the hall was jam packed and people sat on the floor. Many people told me that I expressed what exactly was in their mind. I do hope that the number of such people will increase in the coming days.

You have stated that you refused to be a party to the gaslighting project of the Modi regime. But the Modi regime seems to have decided to ignore your criticism. They have not responded to any of the points you have raised in the book?

There could be two reasons why they refuse to respond . One, they might be thinking that they are too strong to be affected by a book. Second, I have not accused them of anything. I have shown the situation in the country with facts and figures. I have pointed out that the youth unemployment rate is 23% in the country today. If it is wrong, let them come and prove it . If they think that my statement on the Skill India Programme was wrong , let them challenge it. If they think that my take on the unwillingness of the private sector to invest is wrong, let them counter it with facts. realistically they cannot refute my arguments. And on the Dharma Sansad's call for genocide there have never been any disapproval from any quarters of the BJP or the RSS. Then what have they got to tell me? Their silence only means that they accept my criticism. I have not written this as anti-government propaganda. I have written this to raise my concerns about the situation in the country. And I want to put it across that this regime is dragging India far far away from the founding principle of the Republic.

The founding principles of our Republic have come from the arduous freedom struggle. The political platforms which didn't have even a nominal role in the freedom struggle now want to portray themselves as patriots. Can there be any bigger irony than this? They were never part of the freedom movement. They were not part of the Quit India Movement. They were never a part of the Champaran struggle. In fact they had a record of collaboration. And today they want to claim that you are the most patriotic political party in the nation. Theyco-opt the legacy of Sardar Patel and Subhas Chandra Bose. And this argument that I don't have anything good to say about them. Can't you see how many billionaires have come up? Can't you see how many startups have been launched? I see all that. But I also see the thousands of migrant labourers walking from Kerala to Bihar. I see a large number of unskilled and unemployed youth. I see a large number of people falling into poverty. I see a large number of people quitting agriculture in spite of the government's promise of doubling the farm income. Around three crore people have quit agriculture. And you want me to see how many people are buying cars? You want me to see how many people have access to the internet. The most significant ideal of our republic is Antyodaya - unto the last- to reach the poorest of the poor. Gandhiji wanted to wipe every tear from every eye. If that is not your creed, you have no moral right to take out Gandhi Sandesh Yatra. Now , they are celebrating 75 years of Indian Independence as Amrit Kal. They had no significant role in the freedom struggle. They are not even trying to decolonise what remains here even after the British left. They are not trying to decolonise the British names. You are trying to decolonise the Mughal names. That is not decolonisation.

Lying From The Balcony

The BJP government has no data to counter your arguments. Last year when you wrote an article in the Hindu criticising the Modi regime, Amit Shah , the home minister tried to trivialise it saying that a husband and wife need not agree on everything?

They want to project it as a badge of their democratic spirit. As I said earlier if the government is believing their own propaganda then we are doomed. They don't want to acknowledge my criticism. And my criticism is not confined to the ruling dispensation. My criticism is extended to all political platforms which are not doing any ideological work. And on the criticism that I don't see anything good let me make it clear that my job is not to obtain right to criticism by praising the regime once in a while. I have the fundamental , inherent right to criticise the government whenever it goes wrong. It does not oblige me to praise the government once in a while. So I want to delink these two. There are any number of platforms in this country who have become clapper boys of this regime. Let them do that. My job is to point out if there is something going wrong,if the regime is trying to drag us away from the founding principles of the Republic. When the regime is trying to define citizenship in terms of religion that is inimical to our republic, I assert my right to criticise as a citizen of this country.

You conclude the chapter titled ' Pandemic logbook ' with a quote from Nina Peblovzka on Stalin: '' He stands on the balcony and lies. Everyone claps, but everyone knows he lies, and he knows we know. But he continues spewing lies, and he is happy that everyone is applauding him. '' That definitely sounds really dark?

That's what happened in Modi's roadshow in Bangalore. isn't it? In fact these things will increase if we let them go unchecked. And as far as I know , the BJP and the Sangh Parivar have no internal mechanism to rectify these tendencies. It is up to the general public to take it up in the interest of the republic.

So, you don't expect anything good from the present structure of the hindutva forces? Is there any chance of some voices of sanity emerging from the Sangh Parivar?

That is something we should not expect. Unless and until these tendencies get checked they won't have any compulsions to change their course of action. The RSS was founded in 1925. 2025 will be the centenary year for the parivar. That is an important milestone for them. They want their goal , mission and vision to come to full fruition by then.

Do you mean the establishment of a hindu rashtra?

Yes. If these forces are not told about the real strength of this republic, the founding principles of this nation it will be a disaster. Nothing is inevitable.

I have got a new driver. He is new to Hyderabad and doesn't know much about the city. One day I wanted to go somewhere and he looked up the google maps to reach the destination. Google maps will take you through the shortcuts saying that the regular route is crowded or something like that. That day it took a narrow lane. These narrow lanes don't have any separate footpaths. People will walk along the road because there is no separate footpath. My driver , a young man, suddenly said that this was a muslim locality and that's why these people were walking like this. This is not peculiar to the muslim localities. Everywhere people will walk like this if there are no footpaths. People don't expect a car there. Google maps only took us there. otherwise it will be left to the pedestrians and the bicycle riders.

I don't think that my driver is a BJP or RSS sympathiser. But somewhere deep down in his psyche Islamophobia has been instilled. This is an alarming situation. It has reached this kind of a situation. Our fight should be to change this kind of conversation.

Isn't it a reflection of the supreme leader's statement that the extremists can be identified by the colour of the dress they wear?

Yes! We must be aware of these dog whistles.

So, You are giving a wake up call. You are telling the nation that it's time the people woke up to realise the danger?

Yes! The future of the Indian Republic is in our hands. If we don't wake up now , the price we will have to pay will be really huge.