NARENDRA MODI BOUNCES BACK AS INDIAN PRIME MINISTER FOR THE THIRD TERM
Sumanta Banerjee
Although with a reduced majority in Parliament, Narendra Modi has come back to the seat of India’s Prime Minister, which he will occupy till 2029 – unless his two allies on whom he is depending, decide to unseat him. During his election campaign he followed the golden rule – credulity is the necessary ground for the success of deception.
In his speeches, he was economical with truth and extravagant with inventive lies. As usual, he promised the voters more than he could deliver and bounties that exceeded their grasp. He succeeded in getting away with every deception and imposture by assuming the position of supreme power. Swayed by his rhetoric, one-third of the electorate voted for him, while the rest were divided by their conflicting loyalties to Opposition parties, thus paving the way for his victory, although with the support of a minority.
He reduced the people in stature while elevating himself to the height of a larger-than-life arbiter of their destiny. He announced freebies for the agrarian sector, which did not reach the majority of poor farmers and agricultural labourers. Some committed suicide out of desperation. In the urban areas, he turned his eyes and ears away from the educated youth who grappled with unemployment, been denied jobs even when highly qualified. Instead of solving the immediate economic problems of the masses, Modi sought to assuage their grievances by revoking a Hindu past to reinforce blind faith among them so that religious superstitions could be a substitute for scientific reasoning, thus dissuading them from political protests. There were rulers in the past in the world who exploited religion to consolidate power, and plenty of stupid rulers at that ! But rarely has such exploitation been so brazen.
Modi subverts the Indian Constitution.
It is a matter of shame and no little distress that the training in scientific reasoning that was initiated in post-Independence India in accordance with the provisions of our Constitution is being ruthlessly crushed by Modi who is replacing it with Hindu religious superstitious beliefs and practices. He is projecting himself as the protagonist of such obscurantism by coming out with stupid statements like God had fathered him ! In a recent interview, he said: “ When my mother was alive, I used to believe that I was born biologically. After she passed away…I was convinced that God has sent me. This energy could not be from my biological body..” But there is a calculated motive behind his display of stupidity. He knows that stupidity pays. While some of us may laugh at him, a large number of our people lap up such utterances of his. Modi has his fingers on the pulse of these people. Fully aware of their blind faith in god men in their religious life, he is promoting himself as a god man in the political arena so that he can transfer that faith to his doorstep. He is the political replica of Bhole Baba, the Indian god man who recently attracted some thousands of followers who, in order to collect the dust from his feet (considered as sacred) paid with their lives in a stampede.
Modi’s invention of lies
But when he invents lies, Modi at times makes silly mistakes – thus exposing his lack of knowledge of history. To give a few examples. At a meeting in Kolkata sometime ago, to impress its citizens he claimed that when he visited the city as a child one of his attractions was the city’s metro. But the Calcutta metro came in operation in 1984, when Modi was a full-fledged adult aged 33 years old or so. Or take another example. In a video clip on social media, while addressing a meeting in Gujarat, Modi said that he used a digital camera in 1987-88 to click colour photos of L.K. Advani in Gujarat, and he used the e-mail to send them to Delhi (reported in Hindustan Times, May 13, 2019). But such e-mail facilities were not available until 1995.
Yet, it is a matter of concern that in spite of such public exposures of his lies, one-third of the Indian electorate cast their votes in his favor. He could organize mass gatherings during his campaign, attracting listeners who were swayed by his crude insults aimed at Muslims, branding them as infiltrators and accusing them of giving birth to too many children. His speeches revealed a mind filled with petty prejudices and displaying knee-jerk nastiness aimed against Opposition politicians, particularly Rahul Gandhi. To put it in funny scatological terms, Modi’s flatulent outbursts could be a symptom of verbal diarrhea from which he suffers, that compels him to visit the toilets of the media – his favourite being the TV channels – where he relieves himself by defecating sermons called `Maan ki Baat’ (Speeches of Veneration) asking the listeners to venerate him as their savior.
Modi’s religious drivel
Any intelligent person, when reading his messages, or hearing him speaking, cannot help laughing at his stupidity – even when he invents lies. But those who voted for him enabling him to begin his third term as Prime minister, apparently shoved away their intelligence into back burner. To explain their choice, let me borrow an example from the world of arts. We can hark back to the words of the 18th century English poet Coleridge who described the mood of his readers as “that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith.” It is this temporary postponement of critical thinking that allows us to enter the realm of the arts and indulge in trips to enjoy all the products of imagination and fantasies created by writers, artists, musicians – which often do not conform to the strict demands of our rational mind.
What constitutes `poetic faith’ in the appreciation of literature, is being extended to the realm of politics by our people in India. They are extending that “willing suspension of disbelief” from the arts to the political arena by disbelieving the hard reality of the last three decades of Modi’s rule, when farmers committed suicide, the number of unemployed youth swelled, Muslims were lynched. . .While `poetic faith’ is based on that willing suspension of disbelief “for the moment,” our people prefer to make it permanent, which prods them to ignore those grim events, and believe in Modi’s religious drivel about being God’s son thus paving the way for his return.
Modi returns with a shriveled chest
But the only consolation is that while one-third of Indians voted for him, the rest rejected him, thereby robbing him of his monopoly over decision making and reducing him to the status of a hobbling Prime Minister depending on two crutches of regional parties. Modi has always boasted about his 56- inch- chest – meaning that his rule expands all over India. But today that chest has been reduced to a small dish serving stale food of rhetoric only. In order to compensate for his loss of majority in Parliament, Modi is re-winding the same tapes of his vitriolic election speeches, raising the volume this time. But in a cunning twist to his rhetoric, he is projecting himself as a martyr – a victim of the Opposition parties (which now have a powerful presence on the floors of the Lok Sabha) ! Referring to their vociferous protests in Parliament, a beleaguered Modi whined before the media: “For two-and-a-half hours, attempts were made to scuttle the voice of the Prime Minister..” (DECCAN CHRONICLE, 23 July, 2024). He should be reminded that for the last one decade, he scuttled the voices of the Opposition and the poor by unleashing repression on them.
In his present reincarnation as the Prime Minister, he has declined from mediocrity to a third-rate level. The crude witless insults that he hurls at Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Opposition in Parliament; the loud self-projecting braggadocio that he shouts out in public gatherings; the venomous outbursts against Muslims branding them as `infiltrators’ – all these expose a mind filled with toxic prejudices, bereft of any in-depth analysis of the economic crisis that India is going through, and incapable of solving it. His long record of cheating the people and dutifully serving the corporate houses has been extended to his latest budget presented in the Indian parliament, which preserves the economic order that rules over the insecurity of the masses living on poor income and under burden of debts.
Modi’s foreign policy
Modi is seeking to divert public attention and grievances against his failures in the domestic scene by flashing reports and pictures of his visits abroad and meetings with VIPs who greet him with handshakes, and whom Modi embraces in tight hugs, which often make them feel uncomfortable ! I’ve been told by friends from the West that such intimate embraces between males (or females) in their society are usually associated with same-sex relationships.
But by playing footsie with both Putin and Biden, Modi has gained little for the common Indian people. The occasional invitations that he gets from them satisfies only his self-aggrandizing delusions. At the international conferences that he is invited to attend in the US and Western capitals, for all practical purposes, he is reduced to the position of a sniveling sidekick. The only benefits that he gains from them are military hardware from Russia, investments from the US and the European nations. His total dependence on them (and even from his sworn enemy China, without whose export of microchips and other ingredients, India’s IT sector would collapse) demolishes his much vaunted claim of being `Atma-nirbhar’ (Self-dependence)
A bully at home, and a beggar abroad
Narendra Modi represents a typical brand of politicians who have emerged recently in different parts of the world. They come to power on the basis of populist slogans and promises that induce their people to vote for them. Once in power, they turn into authoritarian rulers suppressing popular protests and putting their political opponents behind bars. But while bullying their people at home, they have to cringe before the more powerful US and Western nations, begging for aid and investments from them in order to keep their own economies going.
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