UR Ananthamurthy is a very impassioned man. He wants to leave the country if Narendra Modi becomes the prime minister. Okay, that could be a bit of an interpretation. According to PTI, here’s what he said at a book release function in Bangalore on Tuesday (September 17): “I would not want to live in a country where Modi is the prime minister.”

Not unexpectedly, the saffron brigade unleashed its venom at the celebrated writer almost immediately, calling the Jnanpith awardee “parasite-like”, while another Karnataka BJP leader compared his threat to leave India to Poonam Pandey’s threat to remove her clothes if India won the World Cup.

Undeterred, Ananthamurthy said, “He (Modi) will create fear and if a fearsome man is sitting there, people will just bow down to him because a bully creates cowards.” India, he told the media, needs people who are not afraid and governance where people do not follow a leader slavishly.

He also said India needs PMs like Jawaharlal Nehru and PV Narasimha Rao. Why? Because “...Nehru could write a book in jail —Discovery of India, a great book even today. Rao was a great scholar too. There was some dignity for the prime minister’s post, but that dignity will go (if Modi becomes PM).”

There’s obviously a pro-Congress tilt in that lilt, but nothing rabid for BJP leaders to pounce on him and call him a “parasite”. There’s even less reason for the comparison with Poonam Pandey (she never did go the full Full Monty, did she?).

But here are three reasons why Ananthamurthy is sounding more passionate than pragmatic:

1. It’s a little rich to talk about fascism (“They are a fascist party...” he said about the BJP) and dictatorial mode of governance while enjoying the mis-governance delivered by a party that is the only one till date which gave India a dictatorial government. Ananthamurthy’s opposition to Modi ostensibly stems from the fact that the Gujarat chief minister allegedly did nothing to stop the post-Godhra riots in 2002. Ergo, Modi’s a “fearsome man”, a “bully”.

Without condoning what Modi did – or, more importantly, allegedly did not do – using Ananthamurthy’s logic, the Congress party could also be dictatorial, indeed “fascist”, for the little experiment it did during 1975-77 by proclaiming Emergency.
 
2. Ananthamurthy believes a “bully creates cowards”. Indeed. But what is the antithesis to a bully? A man with zero control? Isn’t that supposed to create chaos, leading to corruption, mis-governance, maladministration – and all the resultant legacy of the Manmohan Singh government, and before him those of HD Deve Gowda or IK Gujral? In the worst case scenario, such administrations lead to anarchy. And it’s because of the bad fruit reaped by nine years of zilch control that many, many people – though certainly not most – want more control to be wrested by the leader.

While a fearful society should never be called for, neither should one that is anarchist.

3. How important is the word ‘dignity’ to the office of a prime minister? Would most Indians prefer to live with dignity, like Bollywood heroes of pre-liberalisation era films, or with more (and better) food, overall growth and development? How important is writing great books? They sound good – in fact, great – in academia but in realpolitik? Is Nehru a great prime minister because he wrote a great book? Was Ronald Reagan an undesirable president for the US because he did not write one? By same logic, does he mean Mayawati or Rahul Gandhi are undesirable as PM candidates? It’s not only elitist but laughable to some extent.

And yes, Narasimha Rao might have been “a great scholar” but his tombstone would also read “the man who sleepwalked as the Babri Masjid fell and opened a new chapter, and raw wound, in Indian society”. The Nero role that his Congress successor is still perfecting.