MAHATMA TO MODI - THE DIVIDERS

I happened to read the article titled "Modi - The divider in Chief" in Times magazine which set me thinking.  The country was divided, you want a better word - use partitioned instead, on religious lines in 1947 and the persons responsible for the same were M A Jinnah who wanted nothing but a Muslim dominant Pakistan, J Nehru who at any cost wanted to be the prime minister of India, his mentor in chief M K Gandhi and the last viceroy of British India who oversaw the partition Louis Mountbatten, the first Earl Mountbatten of Burma.  The country went through the birth pangs and was through a lot of agony in the initial years. 

The failed concept of socialism was experimented by the governments headed by different persons from the very first prime minister, though most of the times the persons from his family were the prime ministers. Nehru was abhorrent to the idea of communism and for a brief period of time in independent India the communist party was banned which drove its leaders into hiding. The Nehru clan effectively ruled the country, though in words a democracy, like a monarchy with their position as undisputed and unquestioned kings and queen. The development that the country saw since the independence to the early 1990s, is despite the government's pro socialistic approach and Nehru's despise for capitalists.  The minority appeasement that was one of the hallmarks of the congress that fought for freedom from the times of its mentor M K Gandhi, was continued unabated during the times of Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi.  Her son went even a step further to legislate against the supreme court ruling for payment of alimony to an old Muslim woman by her estranged and divorced husband.

The congress which fought for freedom was marginalised and a new party came into being with the same name in the mid 1960s when Indira Gandhi split the party to suit her convenience.  She also became close to the communists who were supporting her government who extracted their pound of flesh from Indira Gandhi and the congress. The influence of communists in the government was such that the entire education system was made left leaning and biased. She, when the judiciary set aside her election for malpractices, declared emergency even without consulting the cabinet and imprisoned all the political leaders opposed to her idea and ideology.  Her second son became an extra-constitutional power center bringing on the nation untold miseries with his little thought about scheme for population control.  He later tragically died in an air accident.  This brought her first son who was a pilot and married to a foreigner into limelight and politics. Her rule saw the rise of a rabid rabble-rouser of a Sikh priest Bindranwale being first nurtured by her and later dumped when found too hot to handle.  When the same Bindranwale became a threat to her government she asked the army to hunt him down even by entering the Sikh's holy golden temple in Amritsar. This singular action started alienating the Sikhs from her brand of congress and politics and pitted them against her.  

When she was killed by her own Sikh bodyguards, her heir apparent and a member of parliament, Rajiv Gandhi was elected as the prime minister and he won a land slide victory in the next hustings. His insensitive remarks in a public meeting that "when a big tree falls the earth shakes" on the assassination of his mother and subsequent pogrom of Sikh genocide by congressmen, is still seen as justifying the actions of his party men. This further angered the Sikhs and pulled them away from the congress. With his total inexperience and continuing on the same vein of socialistic and minority appeasement of his mother, he took the country on a downward spiral in the years since his rule.  He was embroiled in major corruption charges leveled against the prime minister in the acquisition of field gun for the army from a Swedish manufacturer.  He overturned a supreme court ruling on an alimony case of a Muslim woman by legislating against it.  He entered into an agreement with the then president of the island nation Sri Lanka, J R Jayawardene and unnecessarily sent a contingent of Indian army to fight with its hands tied firmly behind its back.  This action saw the highest casualties of the Indian army ever. He was also assassinated by a suicide bomber of the LTTE who were fighting a bloody war with the Srilankan government.  He was seen as the person solely responsible for the problems faced by the LTTE in the island nation.  His government was followed by his one time follower and minister V P Singh and Chandrasekhar both of whom followed the same failed approaches in their economic and social models.  

The economic policies of the governments of Rajiv Gandhi to Chandrasekhar saw that the coffers of the government was almost empty with a huge budget and monetary deficits. The country's economy was in total disarray with no money left in the foreign exchange reserve for buying oil even for a week.  Now there is a lot of talk of how Pakistan is facing the tough challenge with its foreign exchange reserve in single digit.  It was no different for India in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  After the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by a LTTE suicide bomber, the wily old man of congress PVN Rao took over as the next prime minister and he appointed his trusted economic advisor Manmohan Singh as the Finance minister.  Between them, they turned around the economy by freeing many that were still in the clutches of the government.

The resurgence of economy was made possible by the Rao-Singh duo but it took an Atal Behari Vajpayee of BJP government to build on the foundation laid by them.  However, the party headed by L K Advani and the government headed by Vajpayee were complacent and expected to get re-elected on their developmental work.  However, the Indian electorate were thinking differently and the congress lead by Sonia Gandhi, the widow of slain prime minister Rajiv Gandhi trumped BJP and a new government was formed in the center under the aegis of the congress lead United Progressive Alliance in 2004 with Manmohan Singh as the prime minister.  The second term of the government headed by Manmohan Singh saw lots of allegations of corruption charges against the ministers and him also personally.  This paved the way for change of government in the center in 2014 and BJP under the leadership of Narendra Modi took charge.  

Narendra Modi took charge of the state of Gujarat as Chief Minister in October 2001 and the first test of his administrative skills was the communal riots post Godhra carnage in February-March 2002.  He made repeated requests for assistance from neighbouring states and the deployment of army when it was found that the state police was not competent to handle the situation which was spiraling out of control.  None of the congress lead neighbouring state governments were willing to extend any help and the central government sent the army on the second day and by then the damage had been done.  

During the period 1947 to 2014 there had been 21 major communal clashes in the country in which as many as 9600 people killed and about an equal number or more injured.  Most of the communal clashes took place under the watch of the governments headed by the congress in most of the states.  No one can easily forget the Nellie massacre of 1983 in which more than 2000 Muslims were killed or the congress riots post Indira Gandhi assassination resulting in about 3000 Sikhs were killed.  However, the media had been highlighting only the riots post the Godhra carnage in Gujarat in February-March 2002 in which about 1000 people both Hindus and Muslims died and about 2500 injured.  

However, barring a stray incident of a communal clash in May 2006 in Vadodara, there had not been any communal clash in the state since 2002 incident. That is a remarkable achievement.   The entire country saw only five major communal clashes since 2014 in the past five years and three of them were in west Bengal state and one each in Uttar pradesh and Haryana.  The central government in close co-ordination with the states had been able to identify the problem areas and take preventive actions to avoid any dispute going out of hand to become a communal clash.

A Sikh displaying his religious identity can be the president or prime minister of the country; a Muslim that too one wears a hijab can be the chief minister of a state; the state governments can appoint hundreds of people of other faith to the boards of management of Hindu places of worship; the collection from the Hindu temples can be used to part fund the religious visits to places of importance by other faith people; the government can have control over the places of worship of Hindus and allow the mosques and churches to frame their own management rules and boards; but a Hindu saint cannot become a chief minister of a state.  That is not par for the course for the media.  

Many candidates for the election in 2019 have cases filed against them in various courts for many criminal and civil offenses. Some of them are contesting election with a protective shield against arrest for some of the serious crimes alleged against them. Even the president of the congress and his mother are both contesting elections on bail.  The media does not seem to bother about these but concentrate on the single individual Sadhvi Pragya Thakur who had been granted bail and who is fighting the election against the person who coined the word Hindu Terror.  This selective outrage is spilling overseas with the Pakistani journalist taking pot shot at the Indian elections.

In the above background, the Times magazine putting up an article by a Pakistani journalist and naming Modi as the divider in chief is nothing but a travesty of truth.  The mentor of congress party M K Gandhi, then M A Jinnah, J Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi had all contributed to dividing the country on religious lines and continue to keep the society religiously divided to reap the benefits for themselves personally.  But it had been the fashion of the media both within and outside the country to blame Modi for every ills of the country.  It is just that he is not an English convent educated, glib English talking, moving around with the persons from media with a glass of wine in hands.  He happens to be a hardcore Hindu who believes in Hindu ideals, who keeps fasting on important festivals days, who keeps his distance from the media, who does not wine and dine the media personnel, who is from a low middle class background, who comes from a small town, and one who speaks in Hindi which tongue is understood by many.  This picture of a person from a small town in Gujarat becoming a prime minister of the country in Delhi is an anathema to many both in politics and media. That hatred spills into words of the journalists who hound him irrespective of other politicians with more serious charges against them for their administrative omissions and commissions or financial irregularity.