A euphoric Independence Day speech by PM Modi

We will achieve all our dreams and goals before the deadlines: PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 10^th Independence Day speech at the Red Fort in New Delhi on Tuesday, a tradition that started from the first Independence Day in 1947 by the first PM Jawaharlal Nehru, followed the pattern Modi set up in his first speech on this day in 2014.

There is energy and rhetoric and numerous goals spelled out. And as the years rolled by, there was the enumeration of his government’s achievements, big and small. The Prime Minister is untiring in his positive thinking, brushing aside the negativities or turning them into challenges.

But all within the scope of the nationalist ideology of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which he never mentions even in passing. Modi emphasised the pantheon of patriots, Gandhi leading the band, and followed by revolutionaries like Chandra Shekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh, and he carefully sidesteps Nehru in his accolades to freedom fighters.

This Independence Day, Modi struck a new note. He said that India will shine for the next thousand years in glory in contrast to the preceding millennium of slavery, referring to the “Muslim” and British periods. And he said India of today is laying the foundations of the glorious thousand years to come. Modi’s aspiration of the thousand years of glory to come can pass off as a pious sentiment because it does not talk of military dominance of India in the world.

The Prime Minister has a flair for counting all the things that his government has done, in the welfare programmes it has ushered in, and the amounts of money released by the government for these measures and the number of beneficiaries.

And with reference to the situation in Manipur, and to the natural disasters like floods in other parts of the country, the PM talked of the whole country feeling the pain because the country is like a single body and what hurts a part of the body causes pain to the whole body.

And he asserted yet another time about India’s new-found global eminence. He said that after the Corona pandemic, India is now recognised as “Vishwa-Mitra” or a “Friend of the World”. It is a shift away from India playing the role of “Vishwaguru” or “Mentor of the World”.

There was also the confidence that the BJP would win the next election when he said that he would explain to the country the achievements at the next Independence Day. He took a swipe at the Congress Party and its dominance by a single family. And in an expansive tone, he punctuated his speech with “My dear Family Members”, which is to say that the nation is a single family.

He was careful enough to emphasise the diversity of the nation, and avoided mentioning religious pluralism. It is indeed logical for Modi to do so because in his party’s ideology the supreme religion is the nation, though the implication is the nation is a Hindu civilisation of the “pre-Muslim rule” period.

Modi’s physical attire and bearing, his confident and assertive gait, and his unapologetic sense of pride is in contrast to that of the many of the previous PMs, who seem to have had a sense of modesty and humility because they considered the country to be large and great and their place in it a small part. Modi considers himself to be a proud representative, almost an embodiment, of a proud nation and therefore considers the immodesty of his tone justified.

A characteristic of Modi’s thinking has been the counting of celebratory milestones of past glories. In 2014, he had set up the 150^th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi and the 75^th year of India’s Independence as targets of celebration. This year he has referred to the 125^th year of Sri Aurobindo’s birth anniversary, and the 525^th anniversary of Hindi bhakti poet Mira’s birth among others.

This is an attempt to keep the mood of nationalist carnival an ongoing celebration. This would appear to be a good strategy of glossing over difficulties and setbacks, of challenges facing the country on the social and economic fronts. It is an attempt to sustain the feel-good factor.