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Modi wants to occupy all mind-space, and ‘Waah Modiji Waah’ t-shirts help that cause.

We have come a long way from the Right-wing’s domination of social media. Today, there are many Left-liberals who create shareable political content. One example of this is Ramit Verma, who runs the Facebook page ‘Official PeeingHuman’, which specialises in making sharp videos by mixing clips from YouTube.

Verma often collaborates with his friend Kunal Kamra, a well-known stand-up comic. Kamra also hosts an online interview show, called Shut Up Ya Kunal, in which he mostly interviews Left-liberal personalities.

Kamra and Verma are also examples of how Left-liberals continue to fall into the Right-wing trap. The Right sets the agenda, and the Left-liberals are happy to follow that agenda by obsessing over it.

Agenda-setting battles

To set the agenda is to decide a nation’s priorities and to determine what people will talk and think about. You want people to think about the strengths of the team you are batting for, and the weaknesses of the team you are batting against.

Every day we see many battles to set the agenda. Liberals and Modi advocates both fight about what the media is ignoring. They want everyone to focus on what’s politically beneficial to their ideology.

Also read: The holier-than-cow Indian liberal elite is actually Modi’s best friend and ally

Take a recent example, the Modi government celebrated the second anniversary of a military raid across the Line of Control, known as the ‘surgical strikes’. The anniversary celebrations, branded Parakram Parv, were louder than commemorations of any of the wars India has won against Pakistan. This was an attempt to set the ‘surgical strikes’ as the main national agenda, since it is a strong point of the Modi government.

Meanwhile, the opposition Congress party and its leader Rahul Gandhi managed to make the Rafale deal controversy top national agenda after trying to do so for two years.

It is for this reason that the hyper-communicative Modi chooses to remain silent on things inconvenient to him, be it Hindutva violence or the Rafale deal controversy. He knows that the moment he defends himself on such issues, he will only give them greater attention and legitimacy. When you adopt the talking points of your opponent, the political centre shifts to the opponent’s talking points.

Modi’s personality cult

People like him because they like him. Travelling for elections in various states, this writer has met people who say things like, “I feel good when I hear Modi’s speeches,” and, “Modi has been slow with progress but I like his style”. This is the result of Modi capturing people’s mind-space all the time.

Researcher Vivan Marwaha interviewed hundreds of young Indians for a forthcoming book on millennials, and found that Modi was popular for reasons other than governance. Marwaha writes, “Most millennials I interviewed could not tell me about any specific Modi policy or proposal that they supported or cheered. It was almost like his policies did not matter… To millennials, personality matters more than policy. Modi is more of a father-like figure…”

This is a consequence of the all-pervasive Modi propaganda machine. The war cry of the Modi project is “Modi! Modi! Modi!” The slogan is “Har har Modi, ghar ghar Modi”. You can’t escape Modi’s face or his voice for a single day. Love him or hate him, you can’t ignore Modi.

Also read: Here’s why the BJP is obsessed with Rahul Gandhi, even though he poses no threat to Modi

The Prime Minister often refers to himself in the third person. He does it consciously because he wants his name to occupy your mind. In one speech, the Prime Minister used the words “Waah Modiji Waah” which PeeingHuman excerpted and used in its viral video against demonetisation.

Making a video ridiculing demonetisation hurts the Modi project. After all, demonetisation has been the Modi government’s biggest failure. The Modi government does not even utter the word demonetisation anymore because if you give anything attention, it becomes the agenda. And the Modi government wouldn’t want demonetisation to be the agenda since it failed.

Yet the obsessive and repetitive use of “Waah Modiji Waah” helps Modi because it is about Modi and nothing else. It reminds you of Modi’s greatest asset: Modi.

The political content of both Kunal Kamra and PeeingHuman is almost entirely about Modi. The epitome of this self-goal is a t-shirt that they are selling online with the phrase “Waah Modiji Waah” on it. The phrase reminds you of Modi’s voice, his powerful oratory, his personality cult, his ability to focus all attention on himself to the exclusion of everyone else.

Issues over personality

Modi’s monopoly over the political conversation is partly why there appears to be no alternative to him. His ratings will fall dramatically if and when another leader occupies national attention. It is not Kunal Kamra or Ramit Verma’s fault that nobody’s willing to wear a t-shirt that says “Waah Rahul Waah”. (Attacking Rahul also helps him occupy mind-space. The BJP’s obsessive targeting of Rahul Gandhi has indeed raised his profile. It’s up to Rahul how he exploits this attention.)

Modi critics should not give attention currency to Modi just because they can’t find a promising horse to back. They could instead give attention currency to issues that are Modi’s weak points.

It hurts Modi when the focus is more on issues (demonetisation, Nirav Modi, Rafale deal, Dalits, farmers, the falling rupee, rising fuel prices, dirty Ganga and so on) and less on the personality of Modi. Even as Modi’s term comes to an end, many Left-liberals are yet to understand this obvious trick. One media initiative that understands this well is Mirror Now: It focuses on policy, not politics, so it’s one media outlet with very little Modi on it.

Also read: The NaMo App is selling not just Modi’s vision but also Modi himself

Obsessing over deaths of sewage workers or the winter pollution of north India would hurt Modi without even naming him. When such issues become the foremost national agenda, they make people wonder what the government is doing. They come in the way of the government’s efforts to create a feel-good public mood in its favour.

‘Waah Gobhi Waah’

Since Modi wants everything to be about Modi, his critics could also disrupt that objective by saying “BJP” instead of Modi. Or just “the government”. Or use a nickname. Just as calling Rahul “Pappu” does not benefit him. Perhaps it is with this realisation that Twitter user @ROFLGandhi_ calls Modi ‘Gobhi’ (cauliflower) for no reason except to avoid using the word Modi.

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