Prime Minister Modi is the best orator on the Indian political scene today. He is the undisputed king of political one liners, alliteration and rhyme. That is the good part; kudos to him and the BJP for that.
Now the bad part: He can compete with the best of them in hurling political and personal insults at his opponents. With his constant and demeaning attacks on others he continues to diminish the office of the Prime Minister. His deafening and deliberate silence--rarely broken if at all and then only to half heartedly criticise the criminals who brutally carry on the RSS condoned-- if not inspired--Love Jihad, Beef (Cow) Jihad, silencing and killing of intellectual dissenters, lynching of the Dalit skinners of dead cows, vigilante killings of Muslims allegedly possessing beef or selling cows for slaughter. Modi's silence makes sense only when one understands his political home the RSS where he got his grooming and training. He is an RSS man, through and through and RSS is the parent and guardian of the BJP. It was at the RSS' insistence that Modi ascended to the leadership of the BJP.
Modi's Prime Ministership has seen the worst communalisation of the entire Indian political discourse in living memory. Many BJP members and members of parliament have been guilty of spreading communal hate. Even the debate about Ram Mandir is all about politics of communal hate and division; it has nothing to with religion. Otherwise what business is it of any government program or political party manifesto to have building any Mandir as a part of it? Ram, as I know Him from Ramayna andfrom Mahatma Gandhi's writings, where ever he might be, must be watching and wondering as to where did he go wrong to deserve such political butchers as his followers who would seek to divide Indians in his name?
What has been happening in India under Modi's Prime Ministership shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone who had ever cared to consider his record as Chief Minister of Gujarat. His tenure as CM was open season for the Indian multinationals to be given the natural resources of Gujarat including land and water and manmade power for free or at nominal prices for generations to come, asking for nothing or pittance in return. And to make it worse it wasn't even investment that wasn't happening or going to happen in India. These recipients of public resources for free or for next to nothing were companies who simply upped from other Indian states to frrely devour the public resources belonging to the people of Gujarat.
And yet despite Modi's crying hoarse about the Gujarat model, Gujarat wasn't first on the Human Development Index in any important categories. The only thing it was first in was one of the worst communal massacres of Muslims in post independence India for which Modi, a true RSS cadre, has never apologised or expressed any remorse except by comparing any Muslims killed in the Godhra riots to dogs killed on the road by his entourage;he urged us to understand if he could feel sorry for the dogs killed by the vehicles of his entourage, it was but natural for him to feel sorry for the Muslims killed in Godhra riots that he hadn't lifted a finger to stop. Shouldn't you feel pride in the former CM of Gujarat and current PM of India for being so sensitive and humane?
The Congress party has serious problems of its own such as the Gandhi dynasty, lack of internal democracy and its history of scams while in government. The communalist rot in politics had started under its raj.And as per the latest news Mani Shankar Aiyar has done one up on Modi in the department of insulting political opponents by calling him a "neech Admi"-- in the process beating his own record of gratuitous and despicable insult when he had called Modi a "chaiwal". The Congress still suffers from a deep rooted moral and ethical malaise made worse by a stubbornly enduring sense of entitlement.
But in exacerbating communalism by the constant political oxygen of their various jihads Modi and BJP have no national peers. He has mastered the art of dog whistle in the service of communalising the politics. His deliberate distortion of what Aiyar had said to a critic about succession to the presidency of Congress was the latest such example. Aiyar had argued that dynastic succession happened in the time of Moguls but not in democratic India. As is his wont Modi ignored the bit about democracies, distorted the truth baldly stating that Congress loved the Moguls and the way succession worked among them and in particular the Aurangzebian succession--trying to appeal to and exacerbate the perceived Hindu-Muslim political divide. Modi knew the way he peddled the half truth had turned it into a complete distortion. But like Trump, he cares little about truth in politics; his need to win is supreme; the country be damned. Like Trump, he is a dangerous distortionist.
All of the above must leave most Indians--because they care for the country and what is happening to it-- extremely despondent and angry. But Indians must remember the country's national motto Satyameva Jayte: Truth alone triumphs; a mantra from the ancient Indian scripture Mundaka Upanishad inscribed at the base of the national emblem and on one side of all Indian currency. For the Truth to triumph it has to be constantly and consistently uttered, defended, and nurtured by every Indian and particularly by India's Prime Minister, the most important public servant of the country. Modi's complicity in the frightening communalisation of politics by RSS whose proud child he is, BJP and their numerous big and small fronts--is an abdication of his responsibility to defend India's ancient pluralist truth; his reckless distortion of truth is a blatant abnegation of a fundamental obligation of the high office he holds.
The great orator, the king of one liners and an alliteration rhymer par excellence, Mr Modi's ready proclivity to opportunistic silence and easy propensity to distortion in pursuit of power, even at the cost of communal peace in India, makes him a dangerous distortionist unworthy of the office of the Prime Minister.
Satyameva Jayte, Truth alone triumphs!
@ujjaldosanjh
