Amit Shah’s Silence Is Louder Than Rahul Gandhi’s Noise

 

There is a peculiar thing about Indian politics: sometimes the loudest man in the room is not the most important one. And sometimes the quietest man is the one you ought to watch.

For nearly three months, the political theatre has been dominated by Rahul Gandhi’s accusations that Amit Shah is frightened, that Narendra Modi is frightened, that the government is avoiding Parliament and that the Opposition has somehow won the battle of the Monsoon Session. The microphones have been busy, the cameras busier, and social media has had enough material to keep itself entertained.

But there is one inconvenient question which has taken an astonishingly long time to occur to everyone: Why is Amit Shah so quiet?

This is not an insignificant question. Amit Shah is not known for sitting in a corner knitting sweaters while the Opposition shouts itself hoarse. He is, whatever one may think of his politics, a politician of calculation and execution. He does not generally advertise the move before making it. He makes the move and lets everyone else explain it afterwards.

That is what makes his silence interesting.

The Opposition, meanwhile, mistook silence for fear. Rahul Gandhi repeated the charge often enough for it to become a media staple: Amit Shah is scared; Narendra Modi is scared; they are not facing the Opposition; they cannot answer.

It was a good line. Like most good political lines, it was repeated until repetition began to masquerade as evidence.

Then came the curious business of Parliament.

The Monsoon Session was stopped on August 13, but it was not brought to a formal end. The distinction may sound like the sort of parliamentary technicality that puts a newsroom to sleep, but politically it matters. The government retains the ability to summon Parliament again.

Suddenly, the question changed.

Instead of asking, Why is Amit Shah afraid?, some people began asking, What is Amit Shah waiting for?

It took them two weeks.

Rakesh Tikait, interestingly, had got there earlier. His reasoning was beautifully simple: Amit Shah is not a man who remains silent without a reason. If he is quiet, something is happening.

Sometimes the farmer understands the politician better than the political scientist.

I was reminded of children.

Years ago, I used to take a group of children out on picnics. My friends wondered how I could possibly manage fifteen or twenty of them when they themselves found two children exhausting. The secret was that I did not manage them at all. I let them run about.

There was only one rule: wherever they were, they should be able to see Narayankar uncle.

And whenever a gang of noisy, mischievous children suddenly became quiet, I knew something was wrong.

Silence, in children, is rarely innocence.

Why should politicians be different?

If Amit Shah has gone quiet, perhaps we should resist the temptation to celebrate his supposed nervousness and instead ask what he is preparing.

There is another clue, and it came from Bengal.

While inaugurating a BSF installation, Shah spoke about land that the force had sought from the West Bengal government for years. He pointed out that the land had not been made available during Mamata Banerjee’s tenure and that, after the change of government, more than 1,100 acres had been made available to the BSF.

But the interesting part was not the acreage.

It was Shah’s formulation: Mamata did not necessarily have to be defeated for the BJP’s sake; the issue, he suggested, was national security.

That distinction tells us something about how Shah sees power.

For him, the BJP and the Government are not necessarily the same instrument. One is a political organisation; the other carries the authority and responsibility of the Indian state.

That distinction is often lost in our politics, where party and government are happily thrown into the same pressure cooker.

Shah does not appear to make that mistake.

When he is speaking as a BJP politician, he plays the party game. When he speaks as Home Minister, he wants to be treated as the representative of the state. And if you obstruct what he regards as the state's interest, he may not consider it merely a political disagreement.

That is the harder side of Amit Shah.

His critics see an aggressive party politician. His admirers see a master strategist. Both may be right. But neither description explains his most useful political characteristic: he rarely tells you the whole game while he is playing it.

He lets you see the pieces.

The explanation comes later.

Article 370 was not removed through a press conference announcing every detail of the plan. Political opponents were not necessarily informed of the next move before it happened. The politics of the Northeast, the fight against Left-wing extremism, the expansion of the BJP in states where it once seemed improbable — these are not stories of a politician who waits for applause before acting.

Which brings us back to Rahul Gandhi.

Perhaps the Opposition did win a round in Parliament. Perhaps it successfully prevented the government from doing some of what it wanted during the Monsoon Session. Perhaps the government took a political hit.

All that may be true.

But winning a parliamentary session and understanding the opponent are two different accomplishments.

The Opposition seems to have spent much of its energy explaining why Shah is afraid. Shah, meanwhile, has given them very little to explain.

That should make them nervous.

There is a song  from Dhurandhar with the line: Half the things the eyes say, the other half silence.

It is an unusually good description of Amit Shah's politics.

He does not always reveal his intentions through speeches. His interviews are not necessarily the place to look. Sometimes the important announcement is not an announcement at all. It is a meeting here, an administrative decision there, a quiet consultation with Chief Ministers, a bureaucratic file moved in a particular direction, or an apparently innocuous sentence dropped into a speech.

And then, one morning, you discover that the chessboard has changed.

The recent meeting with Chief Ministers of southern states is another such piece of the puzzle. Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and others are not exactly the easiest territory for the BJP. If the Union Home Minister is bringing together leaders from states where his party's strength is uneven, there may be perfectly ordinary administrative explanations.

But politics is the art of noticing what others dismiss as ordinary.

The danger for the Opposition is not that Amit Shah is silent.

The danger is that they may be interpreting the silence incorrectly.

A politician who shouts tells you what he wants you to hear. A politician who keeps quiet leaves you wondering what he does not want you to hear.

And in Shah's case, the second category may be more important.

So perhaps the question should no longer be: “Why is Amit Shah scared?”

A better question would be:

“What is Amit Shah waiting to do?”

There is a world of difference between the two questions.

The first produces television debates.

The second produces political strategy.

And in Indian politics, by the time everyone has finished debating the first question, the man who understood the second may already have made his move.