A poet friend on FB has asked -
'If 2002 hadn't happened, would Modi still be the PM-in-waiting? Did undue emphasis on 2002 help his becoming PM a self-fulfilling prophecy?'
Here is my response -
There can never be an 'undue' emphasis on killings motivated by hatred - any emphasis is less than desired. As a poet, you should understand this.
Modi is the PM-in-waiting for a single reason. The entire South Asia has remained a primitive civilisation. There is hardly any one who is not communally oriented. When we say 'undue' emphasis on 1984 or 2002 or any hatred motivated killing small or big, it is a deep rooted insensitivity to the 'wo log' that shows. When the majority communalism is consolidated, it grows into a behemoth, as we have seen at times in Pakistan and Bangladesh and are witnessing in the rise of the Sangh parivar today.
Modi has been able to consolidate the communal nature of our thinking and the hypocritical pretence of development (does it take more than a few seconds of moving fingers on the keyboard to find out the facts on social and human development indices instead of falling into obvious fallacy of 'I have seen the roads in Gujarat'? Social development is not measured by a Nizam or an Ambani's wealth, it is measured by economic and development data that deal with millions) has worked well to cover our insensitivity.
It is because we have remained not sufficiently sensitive to atrocities by the powerful - be it Hitler, Stalin, the American imperialists, or their seemingly smaller equivalents in Indian history, that such atrocities occur again. Ironically, we claim to be the most tolerant and spiritually advanced civilisation on earth and yet in practice, we are blind to the rise of forces that are so hateful. It is not Modi the person, it is the power behind him, the parivar, whose members will not hesitate to indulge in violence of all kinds - physical or verbal, that is the issue. Like the Germans today, someday future generations in South Asia will wonder what really went wrong with their forefathers. It is not for nothing that a small incident in Mujaffarnagar grows into a full fledged riot. I have been told by editors that their colleagues spend a lot of time deleting the vulgar comments that come in response. Women writing against Modi and the sangh are sent comments like 'f..ing bitch' and 'muslim cocksucker'. All this is routine affair. Can anyone with minimal sensitivity remain impervious to this? The typical bajrangi is not just on the road out there; when we forget how Ishrat was killed, that for the first time in the history of India, a minister in Modi's cabinet was almost awarded with capital punishment for leading crowds to rape and burn innocent women and children, that senior police officers of his state are either in jail for wrongdoings like murdering innocents or there are other officers protesting the Government's communal high-handedness meeting incessant wrath of the state, when we forget all this, we really are identifying with the Bajrangis like those hooligans in Mangalore beating up young people for simply doing what young people do, partying and romancing.
So that is what it is. Modi is there because we have found ways to express our communalism in a manner that is blatant and naked, except that unlike what happened to the proverbial king, there is no innocent child on the street to point out that we have no clothes on.
'If 2002 hadn't happened, would Modi still be the PM-in-waiting? Did undue emphasis on 2002 help his becoming PM a self-fulfilling prophecy?'
Here is my response -
There can never be an 'undue' emphasis on killings motivated by hatred - any emphasis is less than desired. As a poet, you should understand this.
Modi is the PM-in-waiting for a single reason. The entire South Asia has remained a primitive civilisation. There is hardly any one who is not communally oriented. When we say 'undue' emphasis on 1984 or 2002 or any hatred motivated killing small or big, it is a deep rooted insensitivity to the 'wo log' that shows. When the majority communalism is consolidated, it grows into a behemoth, as we have seen at times in Pakistan and Bangladesh and are witnessing in the rise of the Sangh parivar today.
Modi has been able to consolidate the communal nature of our thinking and the hypocritical pretence of development (does it take more than a few seconds of moving fingers on the keyboard to find out the facts on social and human development indices instead of falling into obvious fallacy of 'I have seen the roads in Gujarat'? Social development is not measured by a Nizam or an Ambani's wealth, it is measured by economic and development data that deal with millions) has worked well to cover our insensitivity.
It is because we have remained not sufficiently sensitive to atrocities by the powerful - be it Hitler, Stalin, the American imperialists, or their seemingly smaller equivalents in Indian history, that such atrocities occur again. Ironically, we claim to be the most tolerant and spiritually advanced civilisation on earth and yet in practice, we are blind to the rise of forces that are so hateful. It is not Modi the person, it is the power behind him, the parivar, whose members will not hesitate to indulge in violence of all kinds - physical or verbal, that is the issue. Like the Germans today, someday future generations in South Asia will wonder what really went wrong with their forefathers. It is not for nothing that a small incident in Mujaffarnagar grows into a full fledged riot. I have been told by editors that their colleagues spend a lot of time deleting the vulgar comments that come in response. Women writing against Modi and the sangh are sent comments like 'f..ing bitch' and 'muslim cocksucker'. All this is routine affair. Can anyone with minimal sensitivity remain impervious to this? The typical bajrangi is not just on the road out there; when we forget how Ishrat was killed, that for the first time in the history of India, a minister in Modi's cabinet was almost awarded with capital punishment for leading crowds to rape and burn innocent women and children, that senior police officers of his state are either in jail for wrongdoings like murdering innocents or there are other officers protesting the Government's communal high-handedness meeting incessant wrath of the state, when we forget all this, we really are identifying with the Bajrangis like those hooligans in Mangalore beating up young people for simply doing what young people do, partying and romancing.
So that is what it is. Modi is there because we have found ways to express our communalism in a manner that is blatant and naked, except that unlike what happened to the proverbial king, there is no innocent child on the street to point out that we have no clothes on.
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