Congress leader and Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram, Shashi Tharoor, speaks with Manoj C G about his new book on Narendra Modi – The Paradoxical Prime Minister – the meaning of Moditva, and why the Congress is not projecting Rahul Gandhi as its Prime Minister candidate in next year’s General Election. Excerpts from the interview:

What made you write a book on Prime Minister Narendra Modi?

We have to confront head on what he (Modi) represents. He has been seen in many ways as the embodiment of the present ruling dispensation. It is more about the Modi government rather than the BJP government. And if that is so, then we have to confront the man, his message, his work, his beliefs, and what he has actually done for four-and-a-half years.

You have spoken about Moditva in the book which is a combination of Hindutva, economic development and his personality. But Moditva seems to be very formidable electorally. You have tried to challenge it in state after state, but with little success. So what is the hope for the Congress party in 2019?

We have basically two strong arguments to make. The first is definitely performance of the government – you can’t go to the voters with the same old slogans, clichés and speeches of five years ago and expect them to buy it. How many young people who voted for Modi in 2014, because he said there will be 2 crore jobs coming down the road, are going to vote for him again when they haven’t got a job? How many people who genuinely thought they will get cash in their bank accounts from the returning black money are going to vote for Modi?So you go down that list…he is very much more about PR, about marketing, about sales than about substance. And when you have an excellent salesman, but he is repeatedly selling you an empty package, you will stop buying. That is the first and the most crucial thing.

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What the book seeks to do is to make a very reasoned and substantiated argument. I am (an) Opposition MP. Everyone expects, in any case, I will critical – whether he deserves it or not. But I am trying to show why he deserves it. I have actually laid the yardsticks out in terms of very specific things that he said he would do and he has not done. And I have gone through it in some detail with the wealth of evidence, research, facts and figures, anecdotes and footnotes…. Just to say that we don’t like Modi is not the point. As you said rightly many people in India do like Modi. So why do they like him… that is worth understanding. And why shouldn’t they be as impressed by him. That is the other point.

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Isn’t politics by its nature paradoxical, especially in India? Leaders often say something and do something else.

I hope not. Can you name Manmohan Singh, one example of him saying something and doing the opposite?

There is one example playing out in the Congress right now. On the Sabarimalarow, the Congress high command is saying one thing and your Kerala leadership is saying and doing something else.

It is not the same people.

It is the same party.

The high command is talking about a particular principle and local politicians are responding to the feelings and passions of their own voters. Yes, if you want you can call it a paradox, but in the case of this book you will find a hundred paradoxes, not one. If you take a comparison with, say, Mamohan Singh, you simply don’t find him saying something and failing to do it, or doing the opposite. You find it all the time with Modi.

You had 10 years of Singh and no example of this and you had five years of Modi and a hundred examples of this. That is the difference. If you are saying that there are paradoxes or contradictions in every political party, you may be right as a general preposition, but the scale and extent to which Modi’s performance in office has been defined by his contradictory and paradoxical behavior that is I think quite unprecedented.

Is the Congress only confident of stopping Modi from returning to power or are you hopeful of you coming back to power?

I think we are hopeful that there will likely be an opposition victory in the elections in the sense of a number of parties cumulatively will have more seats than the BJP. And those parties may or may not be allied before the elections. In some cases, they will be, there will be pre-poll alliances and in some cases, notably in places where the biggest rivals in those states are two opposition parties, you are unlikely to find them allying….

This is the thing about the parliamentary system. This is not about Modi versus Rahul or any one individual leader. It is about parties that you have to vote for, at the end of which numbers of seats are going to be added up in Parliament and with that you are going to end up with a government. And I think that (the next) government is not going to be a BJP government, and least of all likely it will be a Modi-led government.

If you are so sure, why aren’t you ready to announce Rahul as your PM candidate?

He is the leader of our party but we don’t want to needlessly mess up prospects for coalition talks by pre-judging the outcome of what should one day be a collective decision. Don’t forget, (when) Sonia Gandhi won (in) 2004, she called a meeting of all UPA parties and they then invited her to be the Prime Minister. It is a different matter that she then said ‘no, I won’t’ and gave it to Manmohan Singh the next day. But it was a UPA decision.

So if you go and vote for the Congress, yes you are voting for a party led by Rahul Gandhi but you cannot prejudge the ultimate outcome of what happens at the end when all the seats are added up. If we have 250 seats, I am sure he will be Prime Minister. If we have a 115 seats, I am sure he will have to negotiate with others. We just will have to wait and see.

Rahul is on a temple visit spree these days and he also talks about jobs, development, etc. So what is the difference between him and Moditva?

Huge difference. What Rahul is talking about is an inclusive Hinduism. He talks about embracing all. Whereas Hindutva is an exclusionary identification of a communal identity with the nation and through that exclusion leaving out people who don’t share that communal identity from any other national dreams, aspirations and national projects. There is nothing in common. So to my mind, Hindutva is an anti-Hindu project, whereas Hinduism is an inclusive faith that takes in Hindus and non-Hindus alike. We are showing that we don’t want to completely abdicate the Hindu voter to the BJP, as the BJP is going on claiming that they are the only ones who have the interest of Hindu voters in mind. We have, we believe , as much as claim to our faith but we don’t share their desire to propagate it in the form of Hindutva. That is a political ideology, not a faith.