An irony lost in the current turbulence is this: A populist has been blindsided by a populist moment. An amorphous and unorganised collective has protested in the name of the people, forced a minister’s resignation, and is directly targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Over 12 years in power, PM Modi has claimed a direct connection with the people, unmediated by institutions, processes, even rules of the game. Well, the people are talking back to him now, and some of them are rude. That he doesn’t seem to understand their language, that he ends up talking down to them on Instagram, points to the rift suddenly framed by the upsurge from below.

This is not like the dharna at Shaheen Bagh or even like the farmers’ agitation to which the Modi government had bowed earlier. The first was led by a relegated Muslim minority. Though the figure of the farmer at the centre of the second agitation was more irrefutable, it did not touch off emotions and empathies across millions of families like a movement that makes the young its motif. This time, PM Modi faces an intimate enemy, one he cannot demonise or easily label as the “Other”.

In 2014, when Modi swept to power on the claim that he is the embodiment of the people rising against the status quo presided over by corrupt Congress elites, he was the populist defined not just by anti-elitism, but also by anti-pluralism. The Modi-BJP arrogated to itself the prerogative to define who is, and who isn’t, the people — not the Muslims, nor the critics and political opponents labelled as “anti Hindu”, “urban Naxal” and “anti national”, or those propped up by inimical “foreign forces” with sinister “tool kits”. Till now, the Modi phenomenon has, in keeping with the populist........

© Indian Express