Mani Shankar Aiyar says India's fate doomed if not rescued from Modi's regime
Speaking on the second day of the Mysuru Literature Festival here on Sunday, Mr. Aiyar said Mr. Modi, despite being elected by only one-third of Indian voters, had become the 'most authoritarian' leader the country has seen.
'Two-thirds of Indians did not vote for him, and even among Hindus, half did not. They understand that Hinduism is not Hindutva,' he said, accusing the ruling government of pushing an exclusionary agenda. He cited a study claiming that 110 of Mr. Modi's 159 campaign speeches in the last general election contained direct attacks on Muslims.
Mr. Ayiar was asked to rate the various Prime Ministers – both past and present – and he said Jawaharlal Nehru towered head and shoulders above the rest. He rated Rajiv Gandhi as the second-best Prime Minister for the ideas he had for the country.
Lal Bahadur Shastri had only about 18 months of tenure, said Mr. Aiyar but faulted his handling of the language agitation which broke out in Tamil Nadu. 'It was left to Indira Gandhi to salvage the situation but she went down in my estimation after the imposition of the Emergency,' said Mr. Aiyar.
He was equally scathing in his remarks against P.V. Narasimha Rao and recalled that Babri Masjid was brought down during his regime and which, Mr. Aiyar said, helped lay the foundation for the rise of the BJP.
The Congress leader warned that the BJP's push for 'one nation, one language, one culture, one election' was fundamentally flawed and went against the spirit of India and its diverse culture.
'To build India on the basis of uniformity is to destroy our unity,' according to Mr. Aiyar who said that India's strength lay in its ability to thrive on diversity. 'We are geniuses in how to live in diversity and celebrate it. No other country has succeeded like we have,' he added.
Mr. Aiyar was critical of the BJP polarising the society or driving a wedge on the basis of cultural and religious differences, and said that India can only be built – as envisaged by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru - by acknowledging its diversity and thus securing its unity.
In reply to a question, he said that in a Parliamentary election, people don't vote for the candidate but for the party, and an individual does not count and larger issues determine the outcome.
The literature festival, which was organised by the Mysuru Literary Forum Charitable Trust and Mysuru Book Clubs Charitable Trust, had sessions on social relevance of writing in times of Ted Talks, reels, vlogs, and AI-generated thriller contents, and polyamory in India. There were parallel sessions in Kannada on subjects germane to the present times, art, culture, cinema, etc.
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