Violence has always mystified me. It seems utterly inventive and yet on reflection one sees patterns, connections that one didn’t see at first. Consider the politics of violence and how it unites Congress and BJP. At first sight, the idea seems a bit ludicrous. But consider two leaders as exemplars and paradigms of violence. For the Congress, violence as excess was represented by Sanjay Gandhi. Sanjay represents the deinstitutionalised style so prevalent today. He represents the tiredness with politics, the hostility and indifference to the poor that marks our development. He represents the sense of our city as a visual spectacle that is intolerant of the anarchy of the informal economy. Sanjay represented the inventiveness of evil banalised through management and development. His vision of the city encompassed the small car we call the Maruti today. Evil in fact always creates a populist set of semi-private goods. Hitler after all created the first vision of the Volkswagen and people forget that Fanta was a drink manufactured in the Nazi era. Hitler also created the people’s radio. The technological artifact always provided the gloss for evil, which people mistook as progress. Once one accepted the idea of progress, development, they soon became legitimations for violence. All the violence of the Emergency took place in the name of development, planning and progress. Every tyrant had his willing executioners.  

The reader might wonder whether this long prelude on an almost forgotten politician is excessive. What I would like to argue is that Sanjay lives with us mutated as Narendra Modi. Let me outline this comparison. Both attempted to create a notion of politics around a model of ideal citizenship. Both directed violence against those reluctant to adhere to this model of citizenship. For Sanjay, it was the poor; for Modi, the Muslims. Both used violence as plan, or riots as real estate operation to cleanse the city. Both were great advocates of privatisation. In fact, what Sanjay began was a task that Modi completed. In the politics of mirroring, the Nano completes what his primitive idea of Maruti began.  The SEZ as empty of history, politics, offering only technology was a vision both adhered to. 

... contd.