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Thursday, March 1, 2012

The Rediscovery of India

10 Years of Phenomenal Growth & 10 Years of Scavenging
Are death anniversaries celebrated? “Celebrated” is an unfortunate choice of word to use in the same breath as “death.” And no, that word choice is not mine. It is the media’s. Somebody’s death anniversary is not celebrated unless that person is someone like Stalin. Speaking of which, Jawaharlal Nehru was the only head of a democratic state in the world who mourned the death of “Marshall” Stalin. Death anniversaries of the truly great and noble people rightfully deserve the label Memorial Day. Does anybody “celebrate” Jallianwallah Bagh? If the answer is yes, then he/she is celebrating General Dyer’s unmitigated cruelty.

Yet, for that filthy conglomerate of human scavengers who make up the Gujarat Riots Cottage Industry, the 700-odd dead Muslims presented them a lifetime opportunity to feed off their deaths. What else explains such shameless, and almost sadistically gloating headlines as this sample Google search shows?

Let’s call it by its name: not one black heart in that sullied secular-liberal galaxy genuinely bleeds for those who were murdered: in Sabarmati Express or in the riots that followed as a consequence. They simply want to continue their cushy lives built over the foundation of these dead bodies by keeping the issue alive and by relentlessly attacking Narendra Modi. Actually, if there’s anybody who really cares about getting justice to the victims, it is the man who is unfairly accused of unleashing the riots: Narendra Modi. You call that a stretch? Answer these questions honestly:
  • Which political party was in power for the longest time (both in state and centre) in the long history of communal riots in India?
  • Under which political party’s rule has the maximum number of riots occurred across various Indian states?
  • What was the average response time in each case to quell the riots?
  • How many of these riot-tainted politicians have even faced an inquiry of the kind Narendra Modi has been facing for the last 10 years? Jagadish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar don’t really count. Hell, the whole “getting justice for 1984 riots victims” is yet another cruel joke played by the Congress party.
There’s not a single instance in these 10 years where Modi has refused to comply with the law or tried to influence or scuttle inquiry proceedings in any manner. And inquiry after inquiry has yielded the exact opposite result of what these Riot Scavengers continue to allege.

Even a very cursory look at Modi’s timeline from 2002 to the present explains it all:
In other words, the discourse around Narendra Modi has done an almost 360-degree turn within a decade. Today the same people in the selfsame media that had casually painted him in the ugliest of hues is finding it increasingly difficult to use words like mass-murderer, fascist, and the rest. In the past, a media hitjob on Modi was as easy as breathing for these Scavengers of Human Misery. But now, a hitjob—like the one the motivated moron at Caravan did recently—has to be carefully couched by taking recourse to secondary sources, and hearsay, and quoting allegations against Modi by X person who heard a similar allegation by Y person who thought Modi was a bad man. Despite this, there’s not one solid, provable fact that Modi was behind the post-Godhra riots.

If the court judgments exonerating him is one strong reason for this drastic shift in affairs, there are also other important reasons. Several influential business houses, retired bureaucrats and other people with social standing and influence have shown a favourable tilt towards Narendra Modi in light of new facts emerging over the years about the post-Godhra riots. It was a little late in the coming but it has occurred. Another prominent reason is Narendra Modi’s tremendous success in making Gujarat an economic superpower state in India. A state that was first torn by the Bhuj earthquake in 2001 almost immediately followed by large-scale violence had to recuperate its finances quickly. That under Modi’s Chief Ministership, it not only recuperated but made astonishing gains in a short span speaks volumes about his leadership. Modi’s economic success is not on paper: it has been demonstrated, and demonstrated repeatedly. Apparently, Congress-ruled states run their economies on the strength of secularism on paper and in speeches and hoardings. It is a truism that an accomplished politician is one who improves (and increases) the wealth of his subjects by wise and farsighted policies. It’s not surprising that Kautilya said that wealth was the root of dharma (Dharmasya moolam arthah). The Congress party’s numerous “poverty-alleviation” schemes are simply evil designs to create more and more vote banks not to mention that they’re primarily blueprints for large scale corruption. In contrast, Modi created his “vote bank” by fattening the wallets of Gujaratis more and more through well-thought policies. As an exercise, compare the issues and promises on which UP elections and Gujarat elections are fought. You don’t need an advertisement or scholarly paper to show that creating the Golden Quadrilateral boosted the economy in myriad ways.

That 2002-2012 is truly Gujarat’s Decade of Peace and Prosperity is hardly an exaggeration. For a state that is supposed to be a Fascist Hindutva Laboratory intent on exterminating Muslims, there hasn’t been a single communal riot or organized violence since the post-Godhra riots. That Modi has managed to accomplish all this in the face of extreme, and relentless hostility is truly a marvel. In the excellent Atanu Dey’s words,

Modi is [a] study of how to meet adversity and overcome them with grace, intelligence and single-minded dedication to the goal of advancing the national interest. He epitomizes the strength that a warrior gains from the attacks by his opponents. The greater his achievements, the larger the threat he poses for those who want India and Indians to be backward and poor, and the more intense their vicious attacks on him.

If you look at the vast world of Modi-bashers, you’ll find that all roads finally lead to 10 Janpath. It is not so much Modi-hate as much as it is Modi-fear among his political and other opponents. The Congress party’s Dynastic leadership thrives because—as I explained in my political ecosystem piece—it wants slavish people under it both within the party and even among its political opponents. The BJP is no exception to this. It willingly plays the game by the rules set by the Congress party and routinely falls into traps set for it by the Congress party. Narendra Modi is perhaps the lone exception to this. He takes the Congress party’s threats headon but refuses to bite their bait. He doesn’t talk to the media in English, a fact that only annoys them all the more. He refuses to give them interviews not because he wants only good things to be written about him but because he knows the exact nature of the English media.

The most important reason why he has earned a groundswell of support from tens of thousands of people who want to see him as India’s next Prime Minister is because you cannot say “corruption” and “Narendra Modi” in the same breath. He has demonstrated that it’s possible to achieve prosperity without corruption and by using the same administrative machinery the rest of the country uses. Small wonder that tons of ordinary Indians have created fan pages and similar initiatives on various social media networks devoted to Narendra Modi. Small wonder that he attracts huge crowds wherever he goes. These aren’t people who come to attend because they’re promised biryani meals + 500 rupees. The underlying sentiment behind all this can be described in exactly one word: hope. If you want to call it blind belief in and hero-worship of the man, so be it because the alternative—UPA 3.0—is truly frightening.

This blind belief applies in equal measure to the legions of Modi-haters who seem to be glued to a fraudulent stuck record. No matter what proof, no matter what amount of proof, the Devotees of Secular Fundamentalism and Scavengers of Human Misery prefer to side by the likes of the Banerjee Report prepared at the behest of a known thug and conman like Lalu Prasad Yadav. It doesn’t matter to them if you point out the fact that the 2002 riot cases are the only ones where speedy and fair trials have been conducted and convictions have taken place. These blind Secular Fundamentalists number few and their noise-making quotient has reduced over the decade but they still remain in circulation. And will continue to remain until a final judgment is pronounced by the court on the riots. Which is exactly what they don’t want. The day the Gujarat riots case sees a closure is the day a permanent source of dead meat for these Human Misery-Scavengers will dry up. It is the day Communalism Combat, Tehelka and similar outfits of gutter journalism will scamper for newer miseries to exploit—and wind up in the process. Hell, you know Modi is doing something right when Genocide Suzie has stopped talking about him.

And there lies a lesson, and a truth reinforced: never trust the Indian English media. Because if you do, all you would still see is 10 years of relentless Human Misery Scavenging with a grudging and obfuscated mention of Narendra Modi’s achievements.

Postscript: The Gujarat Riots of 2002 marked a definitive turning point for this blog. It was truly the episode that made me realize a simple truth: that a coin has two sides. It made me look at this other side and examine every word that the English media used—words whose meanings were twisted beyond shape and their usage was taken for granted as the Truth. It was a really remarkable and shattering discovery, one that continues. The next few posts will be dedicated to the memory of the unfortunate people who died in the riots. And most of all to do shraaddha to the souls of all those unfortunate kar sevaks whose only fault was to believe in Lord Rama. And about whose justice nobody ever talks.

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