There was a frugal Arya Samaji style to both, an ersatz asceticism, a toughness parading as urgency. Both are contemptuous of politics as a slow decision-making process. Sanjay Gandhi created politics as speeded-up time and this vision found its most efficient disciple in Modi. Both had a contempt for party politics. Sanjay operated through supine cronyism, Modi operates through a spineless bureaucracy. Both were subjects of commissions of enquiry — Sanjay, a subject of the Shah Commission, Modi the alleged case study of the Nanavati Commission. Even the integrity of Justice Shah didn’t prevent the report from going the way of the Nanavati Commission. In fact, in the twinning of the two one sees not just similarity and continuity, but the real thread of Indian politics. 

If one reads them without blinders, one realises they are two chapters in the history of liberalisation and globalisation. Sanjay inaugurated the privatisation of the state to which Modi added the corporatisation of the state. For both, concepts and ideology were secondary, mere footnotes to the logic of power. Modi is just a later version of Sanjay, a leader with a PRO. Both knew how to cater to middle class vulnerabilities. In Sanjay’s time order came when trains ran on time and clerks reached office before time. For Modi, the disciplined body of the middle class now reacted to words like security and toughness. Both realised that evil, fascism, tyranny becomes possible if one can play on the insecurities of the middle class.

... contd.