After his  “lockdown” address to the nation, prime minister Modi   made  two more  appearances  on national television to  enthuse the populace to show solidarity  in the  fight against  the corona  virus pandemic.

He stressed the need of “social distancing” and enjoined on all citizens to participate in symbolic gestures  such as shutting off electric  lights for nine minutes on the night of April 9.  Earlier  he had  called upon citizens to thump household utensils from their  windows/ balconies to applaud the work being done by medical staff fighting the virus on the dangerous frontlines.

Although  there has been  criticism that  prime minister Modi  had  yet again  taken  to  vacuous   photo-ops rather than make any concrete  announcements on how to tackle the  destitution that  millions of  Indians are suffering, many are willing to grant him a solipsistic cultism if that helps bring awareness to the country as a whole.

The prime minister’s  repeated self-presentations may also convey to frontline corona warriors that they have the attention of the  numero uno, although  health-watchers  also voice the view that such attention had best be translated into  an active and speedy redressal  of the  inadequately protected  conditions in which  staff, nurses, doctors  are now operating for the  most  part. Claims  made by government that these lacunae  are  being expressly remedied have not seemed borne out by  facts on the ground  in health facilities across the nation. Not to speak of the attacks made by frightened citizens  on  doctors and nurses  accused of spreading the virus as they  have gone among some neighbourhoods  to perform their  tasks of screening, or  just out buying provisions for their  families—a shabby occurrence that may not, of course, be attributed to  governmental  deficiencies.

There are  also those, of course, women and men, all as concerned with the well-being of all Indians as the prime minister is—who have felt that the “lockdown”, although a necessary step, did not sufficiently analyse or care  about the consequences of the suddenly announced measure for the vast masses of Indians who would find themselves  evicted by their  landlords, lose their wages,  have little or no recourse to ameliorative  arrangements either for their health care or economic  sustenance.  These consequences, as we see every day since the lockdown have been traumatic in the extreme, as stories of unconscionable misery  have been  telecast, pertaining to   hopeless and helpless thousands trudging  from various parts of the nation.

Many have been inevitably reminded of the days and months following the declaration of “demonitisation”  some years ago—an event  whose deleterious effects still bog the fortunes of  millions of citizenry, especially in the informal sectors of  the work force.  As people died then in expectant lines in front of banks, so they  have wilted  in search of  a home and succor, excluded  from  the  calculations  of  policy makers  until their sufferings began to occupy  media centre-stage.

It may be noted that where the United States of America has set apart ten percent of their GDP  for ameliorating the  devastated living conditions of Americans  affected  by the virus, India has thus  far allocated no more than 0.5% of our GDP for the purpose, unaccompanied by any  viable plan of action detailing  how even this meager amount is to be reached  to those sansculotttes who  are now caught in midways of cities and towns, not knowing what  the next hour has in store for them.

That  America has made a grievous mess of handling the pandemic  overall, thanks in large measure to  cussedly inept, if not criminal negligence from their top leadership must also be noted, setting off  Mister Modi’s  initiatives in better light. He has indeed drawn appreciation from the  World Health  Organisation for his active  marshalling of measures against the pandemic.

Nonetheless, criticisms at home, it would be wrong to think,  are driven by pique. It would be a sad day indeed  when it is thought that those who speak for the wretched of  the nation are conspirators against the glory of the realm.

The Indian prime minister may be commended for making visible his concern to the nation—a sort of salutary assurance that the most powerful Indian is  ooking on, without understating  the gravity of the moment, unlike  the American President.

But, here  is the further point.

As in times of war, leadership is not so problematic when the  dangers that confront us  are of a universal nature.  e it a pandemic or a war, uniting the nation incurs few  ideological conundrums, tactical ones may be,  since those  nut cases who may oppose measures taken against  an  invading  enemy or a virus that  makes no discrimination between citizen and citizen  are universally seen as  just nut cases, unless , of course, the wars and the pandemics be of  our own making. Just to recall, the entirely  gratuitous  American assault on Vietnam  was to divide  America as it had been divided at the time of the Civil War.  Same with the American  invasion of Iraq.  Leaderships that engage in such blatantly  expansionist acts of dominance  then cannot but find it  impossible to unite all  their citizens behind unjust wars.

The real test of leaderships  has, however,  always  been  how  they choose to meet  national exigencies that tend to be born of divisive  perceptions and  prejudices—times when  bringing about  national unity  is of utmost  importance and far harder to obtain.

This is the reason why whereas a Churchill may have succeeded  phenomenally in galvanising England against the pernicious rise of fascism, his lack of ability or intent to do so against social evils left  much to desire. It will be recalled  that Churchill lost the favour of his own party  after the war against Hitler  was won, evidence that  peace times make very different sorts of demands on leaderships  that “heroic”  wartime leaders do not always measure up to.

In the context  of  India’s  very recent  history, for example, it has remained a troubling question as to why  prime minister Modi could not have addressed the nation with the same alacrity and  concern  as he does now,  when  brutal  internecine  killings were happening in the north-east  of India’s capital city.  Or indeed when  unconscionable instances of mob  lynchings  were happening, or when  gruesome caste and gender oppressions have come to the fore.  Or, when scions from the prime minister’s  ideological  camp  made  public utterances  of the most  deplorable  kind,  wounding the prospects of national unity  in  far-reaching ways in contravention of the principles enshrined in the constitution which alone legitimize the state’s  executive authority.  A  minister in the central cabinet  was heard in a pubic rally to provoke the crowd into saying  how those protesting the  Citizenship Amendment  Act  ought  to he shot (https://scroll.in/video/951289/watch-anurag-thakur-minister-of-state-for-finance-lead-goli-maaro-saalon-ko-slogans-at-rally), and the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party, no less, was to exhort voters in local elections to so violently  press the electronic button as to send a “current” to Shaheen Bagh were  very od and young women, mostly Muslim housewives, had been sitting in aprotest  dharna  for  months (https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/amit-shah-wants-vote-to-send-current-to-shaheen-bagh/cid/17398560.  Yet prime minister Modi then thought nothing of such  occurrences.

Indeed, as we write, news comes from various states of India of rtenewed assaults on Muslims who ae sought to be universally blamed for the blunder  that happened at the Tablighi Markaz in Nizamuddin in Delhi (https://www.thequint.com/news/india/coronavirus-muslims-attacked-covid19-karnataka-haryana?fbclid=IwAR2yMfrLvP7HwCOm3tOrbD5qvI3fKTx2Q2uSgvdgiCBsng5IllzIbmr4uQE)). A ruling party Member of Parliament from Karnataka has spoken of an alleged “Corona Jihad Conspiracy” (https://www.news18.com/news/politics/pfi-says-will-file-criminal-case-against-bjp-mp-shobha-karandlaje-over-corona-jihad-remark-2566899.html), and an important spokesperson of the same party of an “Islamic insurrection.” (https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/04/01/islamic-insurrection-in-delhi-tweets-bjp-it-cell-chief-after-tablighi-nizamuddin-incident.html) The question that begs itself is this: are such moves conducive to the national unity that the prime minister rightly seeks to firm up in order to combat the pandemic that  afflicts  all creeds, castes, classes?  And, if that be so, may not the nation expect the prime minister to  sieze the moment to make an appearance on national television to nip such nefarious  political activity in the bud?

After all,  it will be conceded that in the absence of  leadership efforts and initiatives  of a prolonged and determined kind, such divisive and  hate-filled  occurrences must continue to bedevil the  sort of national unity that alone can lend inner strength and cohesion, as well as credibility to national unity. For example,  in America,  the suspect  inability of political leadership to  wage a credible and determined war against racism  continues to  render their national unity a fragile and unconvincing project.   Not to speak of the fact that when  political  leaderships are found wanting  or leaning  at times of  such internal  conflicts, those that man the country’s institutions take  appropriate  hints  of how not to do what they are sworn to do.

The problem, of course, is that national leaders confronted with  such  divisions and fractures cannot  credibly  lead their nations to  humanist unities unless they first revisit  the ideological  building blocks of which they happen to be products.  And unless, in so examining their own ideological DNAs  they  find the  courage and  broad-mindedness to transcend  their own  inherited  social and political constructions, their calls for national unity  can hardly carry  weight or effect.

Is it not therefore the case that just as a Donald Trump finds it self-alienating to denounce racism in America, prime minister Modi finds himself rather silenced when  minority sections in India come under attack from majoritarian   assertions?

And when top leaderships at such times seem on furlough, or, worse still,  dormant in a sort of  quiescent assent,  national unity goes for a grievous toss.

Such times  indeed  demand a shift in the icons that “heroic” leaders worship  in times of war or some  universal catastrophe—from a Churchill, as it were, to a Lincoln, a Gandhi, a Martin Luther King, a Mandela,  since these  lattter it is who left us models of how to lead   when internecine bigotries afflict the fate of peoples.  Hardly as simple a thing to do as to lead  nations  when enemies are common and  uncontroversial.

With respect to prime minister Modi,  it may be that even as he draws  positive  comment  from the W.H.O, for instance, for his alert attention to the Corona problem with respect to  India,  a time may  come  when his approval among Indians also  begins to transcend  sectarian divides and  apprehensions, leading to his  metamorphosis into a leader who may truly be depended on  to unite all Indians behind values of universal equality and  non-discriminatory justice at the hands of state institutions, when  the last oppressed citizen  may  spontaneously expect that  any and all social and inter-sectional atrocities will draw from him the same energy and  conviction that is now on display.

Nothing indeed would seal his place in history as decisively as such a turn of his leadership  content.  That he has the percipience to understand  his own problematic is without doubt.

Were that to happen, a time may come when  Mister Modi  will  remind us of Jawahar Lal Nehru, as much in terms of his international standing, which has happily been growing, as in the matter  of credible and committed  efforts to  unite all Indians  across social and sectarian divides  with  personal  initiatives of the kind that are now  to the fore. As, indeed, in the matter of  putting  the welfare  of the  disenfranchised  first among  his national concerns.

Mister Modi has quite some distance yet to get there,  but if he does embark on that journey,  it will be an input to a more meaningful  national  unity than may be invoked only at times of peril that afflicts  all Indians without regard to  their placement  in social, religious, or class terms.

Nehru may also be emulated  in terms of  the quality of our commitment to democratic  principles and practices.

It may be useful to recall that an article, titled Caesarism,  severely critical of Nehru once appeared  under the  psuedonym Chanakya  in a leading national journal, Modern Review,  in 1937 when Nehru was elected President of the Indian National Congress for the third time, deriding  Nehru as a man with dictatorial  tendencies,  and cautioning  the people to be vigilant against this trait in  him (https://caravanmagazine.in/vantage/want-no-caesars-nehrus-warning).  It came to be subsequently revealed that the author of the article was  Nehru himself.

If, therefore,  citizens of the republic  sometimes voice  critical apprehensions of their leaderships, the exercise of that fundamental right  must  not be viewed as enemy activity but constructive contributions to democratic  consolidation.  Nor may  leaderships in democratic  states  be inimical to facing interrogation  from institutions like the media,  or the intelligentsia at large, since  only a transparent covenant of question and answer between leaderships and the led can truly constitute  unities  of lasting  firmness and  yield legitimate hegemonies conducive to  self-confident  national strength.

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