Ponmala

It is one thing to aspire for greatness by hook or by crook and yet another to aspire for it through excellence in whatever one is good at through perseverance and hard work. The former brings fleeting name and fame, but the latter brings everlasting greatness. Talent by its very nature strives to excel, but when one tries to excel in something for which one does not have the talent, one ends up flattering to deceive – so true of Modi – or making a fool of oneself.

Born in nascent India in 1950, Modi got introduced to the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sang at the very young age of eight. After finishing high-school, he abandoned his wife – a case of child marriage – and went on a two-year tour of Hindu religious places of India. By the time he became a full time RSS member at the age of 21, he had deeply imbibed the Hindutva ideology, which he would later use as his vehicle to greatness. After the RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985, he nurtured the dream of replacing Gandhi’s secular India with a Hindu Rashtra, of which he will ever be hailed as the founder.

Under the guidance of the RSS, he has gone about it methodically, ruthlessly and unrelentingly. Through the Gujarat riots he proved that, in pursuit of greatness, he could be as genocidal as Hitler and Pol Pot and as tyrannical as Stalin. That invited the ire of civilised nations. They shunned him. But he put them to shame by becoming the leader of world’s largest democracy. He walked in glee on the red carpets they rolled out for him. What was more, he had them vying to woo him when he embraced unadulterated capitalism for India’s economic progress.

Impulsive showmanship became the hallmark of his entry into the world arena. He invited the heads of India’s neighbours to his swearing-in ceremony. He believed that he had the intuitive magical touch needed to succeed where all his predecessors had failed. He replaced seasoned diplomacy with vainglorious high profile and surprise events to befriend India’s inimical neighbours. Eventually, it worsened relations with them, and even led to the humiliation of losing territory to China.

In every thing he relied more on ‘divinely inspired’ instincts than on expertise. Consequently, he made moves that immensely enhanced his image as the master of all he surveyed. He revelled in surprise moves like demonetisation and Covid lockdown, which came with very little notice. Demonetisation impoverished the nation and the opposition and simultaneously filled the coffers of his party and crony capitalist friends. Division of Kashmir into two union territories won him the nation’s kudos. Bulldozing Farm Laws and Labour Bills through the parliament will hugely benefit his donor capitalists. The National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment Bill) will bring the AAP ruled capital territory under his control. The CAA and NRC bills will promote Hindutva by purging the country of ‘hated’ minorities.

Dictatorial tendencies are a sign of a ruler’s inner weakness. A weak Modi doesn’t have the guts to face the media and answer their queries. Instead, he gives monthly sermons to the nation. Through ‘Man Ki Baat’ he tells the people what he thinks is good for them, but he refuses to listen to what they think is good for the nation. He hides his inner weakness under showmanship and media glitz. For that, he has bought off mainstream media or arm-twisted them into compliance. A vast RSS cyber network is active twenty-four-seven singing his praises and abusing his critics.

For his promotion to the nation’s top chair, he was immensely indebted to the anticorruption movement spearheaded by Anna Hazare, a Trojan Horse of the RSS who worked up in the people anger against UPA’s corrupt rule. He celebrated the bonanza it brought by corrupting the entire governmental system and electoral politics. He lured some heads of watchdog constitutional bodies with plumb posts and blackmailed others with criminal cases into dancing to his tunes. Among them were even Supreme Court Chief Justices and Chief Election Commissioners. He unabashedly went about toppling Congress governments by buying off MLA’s through the boastful Operation Lotus. And as he rode high on these abominable achievements came a bolt from the blue in the form of a devastating Covid second wave.

All the while he remained singularly focussed on winning elections. And that explains why he addressed some thirty huge election rallies even as Covid-19 was raging in India. He got the Kumbh Mela, which is held every twelve years, advanced by a year with an eye on the upcoming UP assembly election. But it appears he has scripted his waterloo by those. The millions who gathered for the rallies and the Kumbh Mela took Covid-19 to every nook and corner of the country. The pandemic is now raging like an unstoppable wild fire across the entire nation. The great losses his party has suffered in the recently assembly elections and sharp criticism from people who were upto now his cheerleaders are a clear proof that the nation thinks it has had enough of him.

And even as the world is watching with shock the ravage Covid-19 has brought to India due to the lack of proper medical care, he is going ahead with his grandiose projects like Central Vista, which is expected to cost the nation no less then 20,000 crores. If people now compare him to Nero who fiddled while Rome was burning, it is because they have not seen through his game plan. Before his present term as prime minister ends in 2024, he intends to have totally sidelined the enemies of Hindutva – Muslims, Christians and Communists – to build a Ram Temple at the place where the Babri Masjid stood and to replace the old parliament building (a colonial legacy) with a new one, from which he will solemnly declare India a Hindu Rashtra. Hopefully, the nation will have a different story to tell.