Two words that did not exist together 15 years ago, now cannot be separated.
Modi – proper name become common noun.
Godi- godi – lap. Media that sits in the lap.
Semantic definition is easy: Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India since 2014, leader of BJP, product of RSS, face of Hindutva plus development. Godi Media, term coined by Ravish Kumar around 2017-18, for sections of electronic media seen as uncritical amplifiers of government.
Anasemia asks: what loss does each word refuse to mourn, so it must carry the other inside itself as a crypt?
1. Modi: The Name That Swallowed Two Histories
May be Modi comes from modi- shopkeeper caste, Modh Ghanchi. But in politics it has become tva – Moditva. One man containing two incompatible histories.
History One: Vikas Purush – development man, Gujarat model, efficient administrator, chaiwala who made it, 2014 promise of toilets, roads, Digital India. This is introjection of Nehruvian state: we will develop better than Congress.
History Two: Hindu Hriday Samrat – emperor of Hindu heart, 2002, Ram Mandir, Article 370, punyabhumi politics. This is incorporation of Savarkar’s crypt – a Hindu past that must be avenged.
Anasemic secret: Moditva cannot mourn the gap between those two.
Development needs capital, global image, foreign investment, Muslims and Christians also as workers and consumers. Hindutva needs neo-villain – Muslim as extra-territorial, Christian as converter – to mobilize the Hindu.
So Modi swallows both whole. He keeps development alive inside as data – GDP, UPI, Chandrayaan – and keeps Hindutva alive inside as affect ..Mann ki Baat, temple inauguration, shamshan vs kabristan_speech.
The mouth is full. It cannot say: development and Hindutva contradict each other on ground. You cannot have Make in India and boycott Muslim artisans at same time.
Result: the supporter carries a phantom Modi who is only vikas, the critic carries a phantom Modi who is only Hindutva. Both are cryptophores. Both carry a dead that is not the whole man.
That is why debate never settles. One side says look at road, other says look at lynching. Both are right, both are incomplete, because Moditva was built to hold both without mourning their contradiction.
2. Godi: The Lap That Hides a Grave
Godi – lap – from Sanskrit krod – lap, bosom. In Hindi, godi media – media in lap. But also Godi_ sounds like Modi. Wordplay is anasemic symptom: when a word cannot name a loss, it puns.
What loss does mainstream electronic media refuse to mourn?
Three losses:
a) Loss of business model. After 2008, after Jio 2016, TRP economy collapsed. News became entertainment to survive. Instead of introjecting – “we lost subscription model, we must find new ethics” – many channels incorporated advertiser-state nexus whole. They kept dead Doordarshan alive inside private channel: government as ultimate advertiser, owner as ultimate editor.
b) Loss of Lutyens legitimacy. For 40 years English Delhi media decided who is secular, who is communal. Regional, Hindi, small-town reporter felt excluded. Instead of mourning that exclusion and creating new plural journalism, a section swallowed Lutyens whole and reversed it: now we will sit in opposite lap. The form is Lutyens but now it is reversed. If earlier you were in Congress godi, now we will be in BJP godi. Lap remains, sitter changes.
c) Loss of fear. During Emergency, press censored. After Emergency, press mythologized itself as fearless. But 2014 onward, ED, IT, owner pressure created real fear. Instead of saying “we are afraid” – introjection – channel says “we are nationalist.” Fear is swallowed as patriotism.
So Godi Media is not just media that loves Modi. It is media that carries a crypt: a dead independent press it cannot bury. It keeps shouting “nation wants to know” precisely because it cannot ask “the state wants to hide.”
3. Modi and Godi: The Double Crypt That Needs Each Other
This is the most important anasemic reversal.
Modi needs Godi, not as instrument, but as mirror that does not mourn.
Modi’s double history – vikas + Hindutva – cannot be held in one frame without a studio that splits screen: at 9 pm vikas, at 9:05 pm Hindu khatre mein.
Godi needs Modi, not as news source, but as phantom father who legitimizes lap. Lap is shameful unless father is called pitra-purush., nation-father. So anchor must say “Modiji” not “Prime Minister.”
Together they form what Abraham and Torok call fantôme à deux- shared phantom. One carries the other’s unspeakable.
What is unspeakable for both?
The unspeakable is 2014 itself. 2014 was not just BJP victory. It was loss of two certainties: Congress secularism could deliver development, and Hindutva could never win Delhi in English.
Both sides could not mourn 2014. Secular media could not mourn that its model lost trust. Hindutva could not mourn that to win Delhi it had to become exactly the Lutyens elite it hated – English-speaking, image-managed, corporate-funded.
So they invented each other: one as neo-victim- ” old elite media is anti-Hindu” – and hence a neo-villainl – “media is Godi.”
The pillar – here the studio – is renamed without document. The studio that was once market is now called lap.
Conclusion: How to Open the Lap
Crypt opens when lap is emptied.
For media: to say aloud “we are afraid, we are broke, we need owner and state money to survive, and that compromises us.” That is introjection. Empty mouth that says loss.
For Modi critique: to say aloud “Modi is not demon, he is symptom of a nation that wanted both development and revenge and could not mourn that both cannot come together.” To mourn vikas that never fully reached the poor, and Hindutva that never fully healed a Hindu of the loss of the past.
For supporter: to say aloud “Godi jibe hides real issue – we wanted media that speaks our language, Bhojpuri, Konkani, not just Lutyens English dished as Nationalism. But in getting inverted Lutyens, we got shouting, not reporting.”
Until media learns to leave the lap and sit on the ground with people, Modi will remain Moditva – essence frozen – and media will remain Godi – lap frozen. It will become Goditva.
Honest media needs no lap. It needs the floor.
