Hammer. And nail.

There’s a joke about a doctor who cannot diagnose what illness the patient is afflicted with and so, proceeds to prescribe cold baths and lots of ice cream with the hope that the patient catches pneumonia, which the doctor then knows how to treat!

Indeed, there is an actual ‘Law of the instrument’, or Maslow’s hammer, a cognitive bias that involves an over-reliance on a familiar tool. Abraham Maslow wrote in 1966, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

Got this? OK, let us now park this concept for a while as we turn our attention to something else that has been happening and very much in the news nowadays.

So, it hasn’t escaped anyone that over the past few days, our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, as a star campaigner for his political party, the BJP, has spread fake news about the opposition manifesto and agenda; he has vilified Muslims and minorities openly to the majority Hindus, he has lied about facts and twisted history, he has asked for votes in the name of religion and the army, and as each day passes, is going further and further into breaching the Model Code of Conduct for the General Elections 2024, being held right now across the nation.

And yet, the Election Commission of India, and the person who heads it, Rajiv Kumar, refuses to act against such total and open disregard for the law by someone who, at the position he occupies, must set the gold standard for propriety and correct conduct.

I, like all sane people, have been horrified at the inaction, in both word and deed, of the highest institute in this land when it comes to conducting the world’s most difficult elections in a free and fair manner, and have almost concluded that the CEC is sold out, the ECI is defanged, and the PM and his party have a free hand to use any and all manner of devices, legal and illegal, to win these elections.

This morning, I heard Narendra bray about ‘Babri lock’ from the dais in a public meeting and realised that this has to be some sort of bait. I wondered who it was for? Does he expect the INC to start talking about it, so he can control the narrative? Does he think that news channels, already on his side for the past 10 years, will pick that quote up and create the usual shitstorm in the newsroom with talking heads yelling at each other and inflammatory hashtags on social media? Does he expect his IT Cell to create some trend on WhatsApp groups and X, which will shift the focus from real issues to this obviously fake claim? It is clear it is bait, like his other speeches on Muslims and Mangalsutras, buffalos and ‘ghuspaithiyes’, inheritance tax and ‘people with multiple children’, and so on. But for whom? Who does he want to swallow this? Who is the real target of this obvious crossing of lines?

And then the penny dropped. This isn’t for any of the above. These overtly illegal speeches are a challenge to Rajiv Kumar.

Narendra wants the ECI to serve him a notice. Narendra wants the ECI to bar him from running for office for the next 6 years. Narendra wants to be hauled to the courts under the Representation of the People Act. He wants to be charged under Section 153A of the IPC for promoting ‘disharmony, enmity or feelings of hatred or ill-will between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities’. He wants a judge to pronounce him guilty and sign an arrest warrant. Narendra wants him to do that because then he can claim to be the victim, a card he knows how to play. He has realised by now that he is out of ammunition to throw at the opposition. He’s tried greed (money), he’s tried fear (ED/CBI), he’s tried emotional blackmail (crying), he’s tried everything. But the people are not in a mood to listen. He is seeing the election slipping away. Of course, there are the EVMs. There is the post-results horse-trading. But that is in the future. Right now, he needs to salvage the situation. And all he has is the victim card. That’s his hammer. And he needs a nail: the victim card.

He’s played the victim card all the time ever since 2002. In his books, Hindus are victims, Indians are victims, the right-wingers are victims, the traditionalists are victims, the BJP is a victim, and he is the victim. And if there is a victim, there is a perpetrator. If there is a perpetrator, there is hate. If there is hate, there is a justification to use violence against this perpetrator. And if one has the state power to visit such violence on others, then all one needs is an excuse. Narendra wants the CEC to give him that excuse. He wants to go to the people to claim that he is being singled out, that they want to harm him (and by proxy, Hindu interests), that they want him behind bars, that they want to stop India’s progress that was well underway with him at the helm.

And then, he wants to impose Emergency. Not the shadow one, not an undeclared one, not a covert one, but an actual, formal Emergency. Like his hero Indira (but we already knew that). He wants to concentrate all the power in himself. And a nice and constitutional (in letter) Emergency, duly signed by the President, provides just the instrument. What he will do with these powers is anybody’s guess (mine is that he would disband the Parliamentary system and declare himself President). But that he wants those powers is no longer something that is in the realm of speculation.

That is why he is baiting the CEC. But, at least at the time this goes to press, the wily fox that Rajiv is, he ain’t biting. And that, in some way, my friends, is the greatest service to this nation the CEC can provide and is providing. By not rising to the obvious and not doing what Narendra wants him to do, he is denying the Supreme Leader an excuse to destroy or, at the very least, disable democracy in India.

I take my figurative hat off to you, Rajiv, for showing a monk’s restraint. You are a dog-damned hero. You effing rockstar. You.