Since the 2002 communal violence the chief minister Modi has completely dominated the political arena in Gujarat, and has converted it into BJP’s laboratory of Hindutva politics. During our time in India we heard a lot about Gujarat being a laboratory for Modi to research the implementation of his new ideology Hindutva 2.0. Ideology that is driven by professionals, the middle class, and by OBCs who are eagerly to improve their social status. In the research it is important to pay attention to the vocabulary that ideology uses in every day interactions with the masses. Because the language that an ideology provides a researcher with an insight on the discourse in which the creators and owners of the ideology exist. Moreover, the language BJP and Modi uses, especially in the choice of metaphors, represent a message that the leaders want to deliver to masses. And Gujarat was advertised by the BJP as “the laboratory of Hindutva 2.0,” or nationalism with the face of neo-liberal development.  For some reason a world “laboratory” resonated for me in India; however, I did not give much thought to it during the trip, and forgot about the metaphor.

Back home, when I was writing the conference proposal the metaphor of Gujarat as a laboratory for Modi to conduct the experiments with the new version of ideology came back to me. “Laboratory,” I said to myself and paused for a minute, “Why would you refer to a state, as a laboratory? What is the first thing that comes to mind when someone connects politics with experiments?” The answer was lying on the surface, twentieth century knew one more political leader that was passionate about the experiments and laboratories, his name was Adolf Hitler. A lot of dictators were compared to the leader of the Third Reich; however, not all of them loved these comparisons. At the beginning of this blog I outlined the importance of language in understanding of the ideology, and it is apparent, that Modi uses the Hitler allusions on the symbolic level. In Gujarat we heard about changes that happened to the textbooks in school under Modi’s regime, and that Hitler is discussed as a “strong European leader.” Moreover, one of the interviews referred to the state of Gujarat, as a place that would Europe look like if Hitler was in power.

Gujarat is a laboratory for huge political experiments similar experiment in Nazi Germany leaded to the creation of other laboratories, not metaphorical ones. Block 10 at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp was a cellblock where women and men were used as experimental subjects for German doctors. The experiments in Block 10 ranged from skin testing for reaction to relatively gentle substances to giving phenol injections to the heart for immediate dissection. The main doctor who worked in Block 10 was Josef Mengele. Every political experimenter must remember this side of ideological experiments, and do not legitimize them at any price. A new, even perfect ideology cannot be a result of violent experiments that have caused thousands of deaths. I will hope that Mr. Modi realizes it, and it will be extremely difficult for him to replicate the Gujarat experiment in other states given the vast difference between the “laboratory” and the real world.