Harish Khare is a man so soft spoken that to call him gentle would be an understatement. Never known to have raised his voice much above a whisper, he always came across as a polite man who when really faced with outrageous opposition happily agreed to disagree. He took the same sobriety and an ability to keep his head when others were losing theirs to the PMO when Manmohan Singh occupied the office — first with a degree of quiet dignity, only to be later lampooned by unforgiving social media as Maunmohan Singh. If Khare had decided to write about the years spent with Singh, it would have been par for course. Never mind what Sanjaya Baru has written, Khare, doubtlessly, would have had a thing or two to say as well. Instead, he springs a surprise. And what a surprise! Swimming against the tide he has used his seasoned pen to give us an account “How Modi Won It: Notes From the 2014 Election”.
Yes, we know Rajdeep Sardesai has been there, done that too. Sardesai was like a river in spate, no full stops, lots of cascades, plenty of torrents. Khare is more like a river in the plains, quiet, unobtrusive, still and profound. Sardesai had passion, Khare is almost like a geometrician. Right at the beginning he writes about his work, “There is no inside information, no scoop, no breaking news.” Sounds a tad disappointing? Only to those for whom every literary work has to have a degree of sensationalism. Immediately after, Khare writes the way only he can. “A General Election is the biggest mass ceremony we perform in India. It is bigger than the ritual holy bath by millions during the mammoth Kumbh Mela, bigger than any Haj congregation, bigger than Diwali, Dussehra, Holi, Eid or Christmas.” Who could have compared our elections to the Kumbh Mela or Haj?
Then, the seasoned journalist in him comes to the fore as he writes with a blend of sagacity and perspicacity. During the heat of the elections, he had written, “It is the fourth week of March, and the election campaign is in full swing. I am somehow troubled that the media has abandoned any pretext of neutrality, objectivity and all other professional virtues in its coverage, especially in its reportage of BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi,” adding, “If money could buy an election, then the Bharatiya Janata Party is home and dry. If Corporate India could help purchase a mandate, then Mr Narendra Modi has already been sworn in, in that nice little ceremony in the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan. And if the media’s professional gullibility could create a ‘lehar’, then India stands joyfully restored to the decisive leadership of decisive deshbhakts. All that remains is for us all to bow our heads and say amen.”
What Khare writes about the media taking leave of objectivity was amply proved by some of the books on and around Modi that hit the market in the run-up to the elections. A couple of journalists turned authors and decided to paint a halo around Modi with hagiographies that masqueraded as biographies. Amazingly, they circulated myths and make-believe like irrefutable logic and reason and happily touted Modi as the panacea for all the maladies afflicting the nation.
The pompous names of the books left little scope for imagination or even curiosity. “Narendra Modi: Yes, He Can…Only He Can Save India From Impending Doom” and “The Game Changer” were class studies on the winds of change and the crop many were looking to harvest. Some authors talked of Modi’s alleged fight with a crocodile, almost in Hindi film fashion, reminding many of Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra’s potboilers of the ’80s. Others sought to paint him like the Budha in the context of desertion of his wife! Then there was a book by Nikita Parmar and Paavani Sinha where even Modi’s alleged love for cooking, swimming and pets was expressed with a ring of the divine.
Then there were books by seasoned journalists Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay and Kingshuk Nag which were, mercifully, far removed from the eulogies penned with relish across the year. However, the fact that these well established media men decided to write about Modi showed that the Gujarat CM had captured the fancy of the nation; a fancy at least in part created by the media. Like the magic broom in Harry Potter took fans to a fantasy land, we were sought to be taken to a dream world where one hero put everything right. The reality lay elsewhere. We had to wait for the politely persuasive Khare to drive home the point.
