M L Kotru
The Modi bandwagon continues to be on a roll, happiest as it does so in lands afar and unfamiliar, in ice cold Vancouver, in Toronto or in the spring air of a Germany or France.
There is no stopping Modiji. There can’t be. Y’see cheer leaders, Gujarati and non-Gujarati alike, working or living in these lands, are always on hand, present wherever he goes, wowing him, the self-made rock star of a Prime Minister.
Modi, Modi, Modi…… their full-throated chants reminiscent of similar war cries heard last year in Madison Square Garden, later replicated in Australia when he went down under some months back.
If it is fun for the Indian diaspora and the host countries, it’s strictly business as usual for us at home who must watch the fun and games in a boring, more of the same, recital of the Modi journey, courtesy the whole lot of our pliant TV networks, who in the words made famous by one of Modi’s illustrious leaders, L. K. Advani, who have chosen to crawl when they were merely expected to bend.
The Modi magic just won’t let go. And the Prime Minister a consummate performer, never loses a moment blowing his own Government’s trumpet and simultaneously projecting on predecessor governments, all of them, are as non-performers , a thing rarely done by heads of government of a democracy while visiting another country. You don’t carry your domestic political battles to arenas as far away as Sydney and New York Tokyo and Beijing. Even dictators have avoided making references to their domestic politics while travelling to another country
The Modi saga requires it that the entire narration be rendered in first person singular. The Modi magic would be reduced to a cipher minus Modi. Thus the observation that while it takes just 16 or 18 hours to travel from Delhi to Ottawa it has taken an Indian Prime Minister 42 years to visit Canada. Sheer bravery. Mr. Modi dosen’t think much of it when he chooses to deliver a pithy observation by the Indian Supreme Court to silence, even from distant Vancouver, critics of his party’s religious intolerance.
A pity, that he should have chosen to give out a message, an RSS pracharak-like-, reminding his largely foreign audience of an observation made by the Indian Apex Court some years ago. A height of misrepresentation it was when his opponents accused his government of being ultra nationalist Hindus when the truth was (quoting the Supreme Court observation) Hindutva, his party’s loadstar, was nothing more than a way of life. Hinduism was not a religion, he concluded.
Modi obviously must have known then of the desecration of a hallowed church in Agra, Mother Mary’s. There’s a chance, though very bleak, also that he might have heard of some 800 Hindus threatening to accept Islam to save their homes. The second one, predictably, didn’t in the end amount to much. They continue to be Hindus. And thank God for that.
Mr. Modi evidently believes he has done a lot to put India back on the track of economic development; indeed he didn’t tire of mentioning it repeatedly on his latest foreign tour that most international financial institutions have already rated India as the world’s fastest growing economy, a sea-change, he asserts, from the doom and gloom that prevailed until his government came to power less than a year ago.
He is intolerant of criticism, largely because of his monumental self-belief. Forget the Indian economy he would seem to suggest that even the god’s must learn to bend to his wishes. Roads, power, waterways, not to speak of mega industrial projects about to be unveiled by his friends from the corporate world would change the face of India. Hitherto we spoke in terms of megawatts now we talk of ligawatts or whatever. Remember “Make in India” is our new mantra.
To hold audiences in foreign lands in thrall with your unquestioned oratorical skills, with catch phrases like good governance and development thrown in for good measure, it is only to be expected that Mr. Modi should click with his audiences. But there is limit even to the Modi type of aspirational hardsell.
The yawning gaps between promises made/sold and goals achieved can sometimes become embarrassing. I don’t want to sound wholly negative but the truth is if a balance-sheet were to be drawn up just now of promises made and promises redeemed, Mr. Modi would sadly end up in the red. There is no end to the schemes and programmes, some of these representing the unfinished business left behind by the UPA II, announced routinely by the Prime Minister but most of which still remain just so many schemes.
It’s not that Mr. Modi could be unaware of the serious gap between promise and performance; indeed he must be worried that he has not been able to deliver on some of the basic promises made by him during his masterly poll campaign last year.
As a working senior citizen in my 80s I can tell him without fear of contradiction that the hard times are still around. The voters in Delhi, the cosmopolitan heart of India have already served a most telling notice in this regard on Mr. Modi’s party in the recent State Assembly Elections, all but wiped out by the upstartish Aam Aadmi Party.
It’s one thing to have some world leaders eating out of your hands, as it were, or a Barrack Obama, the US President, writing a citation-full of praise for you and your leadership qualities. When it comes to the crunch, Mr. Modi’s friend Barr-aa-ck (that’s how the Prime Minister repeatedly addressed him when the US President was in Delhi) may well have a different take on the Prime Minister if things don’t go right for him here in India.
As it is, I heard talk of Modi “double speak” on minority rights in our Vasudeva Kuttambakam, aired by some in his host countries . Yes, it is not my imagination at work.
Important Church leaders the world over are aghast at the recurrence of incidents involving desecration of minority institutions, throughout the length and breadth of India; almost every single incident bears the stamp of Hindu extremist groupings, all owing allegiance to the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh which also claims Mr. Narendra Modi’s political party, the BJP, as one of its wards.
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