Review Details
Parvin Sultana
MODINAMA: ISSUES THAT DID NOT MATTER
By Subhash Gatade
Leftword Books, 2019, pp. 128 , Rs.195.00
HINDUTVA: EXPLORING THE IDEA OF HINDU NATIONALISM
By Jyotirmaya Sharma
Context, 2019, pp. 190, Rs.313.95
M.S. GOLWALKAR, THE RSS AND INDIA
By Jyotirmaya Sharma
Context, 2019, pp. 94, Rs.299.00
DECODING THE RSS: ITS TRADITIONS AND POLITICS
By Raosaheb Kasbe
Leftword Books, 2019, pp.174, Rs.250.00
RAJIV GANDHI TO NARENDRA MODI: BROKEN POLITY, FLICKERING REFORMS
By Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr.
Sage Select, 2019, pp. 211, Rs.330.75
The 2014 general elections which saw the Bharatiya Janata Party return to power with an absolute majority is believed to have brought an important paradigmatic shift to Indian politics. Scholars commenting have termed it as a majoritarian shift. Post elections, there have been discussions which tried to understand the reasons behind this massive mandate that the Right Wing political party managed to get. This Right Wing shift in India’s electoral politics was further proven by the 2019 Parliament election results which gave the BJP a larger mandate. Scholars have written trying to understand the rise of BJP—is it an isolated event or a continuation of past developments? This becomes important because even at the international level, there is a shift towards conservative politics.
Indian academia has also taken an objective look at this shift. A number of books have been written on various aspects of present-day politics, the ideologies and icons that paved the way for this rise and continue to provide intellectual fodder for this politics, the liberal economic policies which have been taken to their logical conclusion by the present government, etc. And these books have provided us with important insights to make sense of the present-day political situation of the country.
Subhash Gatade in Modinama: Issues That Did Not Matter contextualizes the rise of the BJP in a fertile ground prepared by previous governments. Gatade talks about the systematic dismantling of various public institutions that this government has undertaken. Be it the police, bureaucracy, CBI, ED etc., there is an attitude to politically manipulate these institutions and use them for political vendetta. There is a normalization of violence. The harbingers of New India see no problem in giving parliamentary ticket to a terror accused or garlanding a mob lynch accused.
