Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
It really doesn’t matter anymore, to tell Sancho Panza from Don Quixote. They are the same : ek jaan, do badan. Narendra, Modi, whom the Hindu right would love to see occupy the ‘raj gaddi’ in Delhi and Amit Shah, who by his own reckoning, has made the Hindi heartland, Uttar Pradesh, it largest component, safe for his boss. He has spent the whole year nursing chauvinistic forces, and even succeeded in unleashing them during the poll campaign, and virulently at that towards the end.
The Hindus have “woken up”, mentally prepared to take the plunge, as Modi, Shah and their parivar would have wished. The Modi-Shah two-in-one has now told us, only towards the end, that their mission is accomplished.
I heard a celebrated US-based Indian economist, and of great repute is he, offering help, should he be asked to, in selecting the right people for certain positions. He endorsed one of the names which was floated earlier this week as the right choice. “If I am asked I can make similar suggestions,” the good old economist volunteered from a US university campus where he works.
And, he did it on one of the dedicated TV channels. Dedicated, I am not saying in a pejorative sense. It’s just that many in the media, particularly the noisy as distinct from the nosey, don’t want to feel left out. Mercifully, the results of the tortuous poll campaign should be with us sometime next week and hopefully the news for the duo and Sancho may indeed be good, for them and their parivar. The other parivar, the one headed by Maa-Beta, as Modi would have it, in sack cloth and ashes, hopefully consigned to oblivion, leaving the Modi-led saffron parivar free to fulfil its dream of Ram Rajya, as Modi promised us from Faizabad on Monday, within hearing distance of Ayodhya and the late Babri Masjid. The backdrop of the stage from which he sold his frenzied dream was dominated by a massive filmy set, depicting three dimensionally, Lord Rama and the grand Ram temple, next perhaps to the late mosque.
Amit Shah had the previous day discovered that Azamgarh, with a large Muslim population, was indeed the hub of Islamic terrorism, unmindful of the hurt it might cause among to ordinary Muslims living in the district which claims Kaifi Azmi, the great Urdu poet, as one of its sons. But who cares; all’s fair in love and war.
And this was the season for hate, if you care, to see the two statements made on successive days and towards the fage and of the election campaign. The moment of truth as it were.
That poison spewed by the Modi campaign these past two weeks, has gotten to work was evident from many States, like Assam where some two score Muslims were killed after Modi described them at an election rally in Assam, as Bangladeshi infiltrators, or the manner in which activists assaulted Kashmiri students living in a NOIDA hostel, questioning their nationality, asking them to say Bharat Mata ki Jai and insisting that they shout Pakistan Murdabad. This was not for the first time that Kashmiri students have been singled out to undergo some rough and ready tests to prove their Indianness – Banglore saw many of them running for their lives after being roughed up in a hostel. There may be some truth in fears expressed by some about Bangladeshi illegals sneaking into more hospitable environs in neighbouring Assam but where are the students from Kashmir expected to go for higher studies, if not for jobs. Why should they always be among the suspects whether it is a cricket match which India loses or whenever there is an act of terrorism in any part of the country. It does not make sense to me when you ask me to give a Nelson’s eye to the plight of the Kashmiri boys. How about the day when Kashmiri Pandits were shown the door out of the valley? I for one don’t believe in an eye for eye approach.
If the State authorities and Delhi failed to stop the migration it doesn’t follow that Kashmiri Muslim youth studying in institutions outside their State should be hunted down two decades later. I also know there cannot be a Kashmiri Pandit angle to the victimization of Kashmiri Muslim boys. I am not revealing a State secret when I say that Kashmiri Muslims generally suffer from a sense of alienation when it comes to ordinary interaction between, say, a group of ordinary Kashmiris and non Kashmiris, in places like Delhi or Banglore or even Kolkata. And this feeling sadly refuses to go away. Witness with all the security bandobast and scattered polling for just three seats no more than 26% Kashmiris cast their ballot in the valley. The figure for Jammu region is much higher. Modi’s Mian Musharraf, his scorn for the skull cap, his threats to do away with Article 370 of the constitution, his virtual endorsement of the Jammu separatist agitation of the ’50s do not help in restoring confidence. No wonder even top mainstream leaders including the former Chief Minister and the PDP Chief Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and the present Chief Minister Omar Abdullah are vehemently critical of the situation. It makes their task as leaders of mainstream pro India parties look untenable, something their separatist opponents relish.
Looking back as the campaign closes down and the Modiites prepare for the crowning of their hero as the next Prime Minister in the next few days, as predicted by most opinion polls, what remains to be seen is the kind of wave it was that brought Modi to high office. Memory tells that Nehru’s 364 seats in 1952; 371 in 1957 and 361 in 1962 were never called waves. The first “wave” came to be associated with Indira’s landslide Garibi Hatao of 1971, followed by her and son Sanjay’s 1977 defeat, which became the Janata wave. In contrast to waves of that magnitude we are today trying to see a Modi wave in as low a target as 182-200 Lok Sabha seats almost half the number of seats won by Nehru Indira and the Janata party. Should for some reason or the other Modi fail to get 182 seats it would be seen as a diminution for him. It’s likely that the Congress may suffer the humiliation of seeing its undeserving 205 reduced substantially which however may not translate into Modi getting anywhere near say 210 or 230. Keep doing the sums.
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