Skip to main content

Modi’s Dalit Parivar

Courtesy The Hindu

Narendra Modi, India’s possible future Prime Minister, was in Kerala yesterday.  According to a front page report in today’s Malayala Manorama (the widest circulated paper among all the regional languages in India – leaving out a Hindi paper), Modi proclaimed in Kerala that his family meant the Dalits, the oppressed, the Adivasis and the backward communities in India.  He didn’t mention Muslims, of course.  Please understand his constraints.

Vote for Modi so that all the backward communities in India will be liberated.

Don’t ask which backward community of Gujarat he liberated so far in spite of being the Chief Minister of that state for three consecutive terms.

He brought development to the state.  At what cost?  And what kind of development?

According to the Raghuram Rajan panel conclusions, Gujarat does not even figure in the list of developed states.  The hunger rates in Modi’s Gujarat are higher than those in the Yadavs’ UP.  The Shiv Sena’s Maharashtra is preferred by Amreeka for FDI.  There are more malnourished children in Modi’s Gujarat than in most states of India...  What has Modi done?  Except play politics for the sake of becoming the Prime Minister?  Rags to riches ambition?

I loved Modi’s joining hands with the failing politicians of Kerala.  Because it has made me understand Indian politics better.  Modi teaches me that politics is the best refuge for the most useless scoundrels on the earth.   

Modi spoke the most divisive politics in Kerala.  He made it appear the most uniting.  Such people can never  be trusted.  Should not be trusted.  They can change their stance at any time.  They can join hands with the businesspeople when that suits them.  They can join hands with the lowest castes when it suits them.  [The person raising hands with Modi on the left is Vellapally Natesan, a man who has been trying to promote caste politics of a different kind in Kerala, the same kind that Modi succeeded with against Muslims in Gujarat].
Modi and Natesan can be a good team.  Both belong to the same category by their roots. 


I love India with its infinite variety.  I hope Modi won’t be its Prime Minister. 


Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers


Comments

  1. Replies
    1. Shaleen, I don't know the answer. But I can give a hint
      http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-newdelhi/eminent-gandhians-extend-conditional-support-to-aap/article5672084.ece

      Delete
  2. Your hopes are are as good as done and dusted - not going to happen. I could, if I cared enough about a Marxist criticism of Modi, give a point by point rebuttal of your rant above. But the thing is that both Communism and its narrative have lost their relevance in the modern time. If stunts like these serve as the last ditch effort to prevent the inevitable, then I must extend my sympathies.

    As for your avowed support to the AAP, I hope you have read this excellently written piece:
    http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/national-interest-arvind-chitra-katha/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sid, your link leads to a review of Kejriwal's book, which I had reviewed myself. Read my review, 'A Utopian Dream', at
      http://matheikal.blogspot.in/2013/10/a-utopian-dream.html

      You are free to interpret my hopes in anywhichway you like. Your labelling it as "ranting" shows your own attitude of vulgar intolerance of differing views. I pity you for such straitjacketed ideas.

      I know the kind of politics going on in Kerala played by the very people with whom Modi shared platform in the picture given in this blog. I know the kind of divisiveness they are bringing to Kerala, a state which was famous for its religious tolerance.

      Delete
  3. The two responses above are from a Modi supporter and an AAP non-supporter. Both Modi and Arvind Kejriwal have their strengths and weaknesses. Their rhetoric (and the noise from supporters) is to get ordinary Indians to gloss over the latter. I hope, for India's sake, that never happens. It won't if ordinary Indians ACTIVELY ensure our public servants are on the job, attending to the many issues that have beleaguered our nation - especially corruption, collusion with the criminal elements of society and an utter disregard for the law from our politicians and the police.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, KM, for your mature response to the blog.

      The problem with people anywhere in the world is that religion sways them too easily. Modi plays with religious sentiments which is the most stupid thing that a public figure can do. Because religious sentiments inevitably create Leviathans. Modi has nothing to offer to India: neither development nor any profound vision or even a useful strategy for the country's progress. He is a good public speaker who can foment sentiments, nothing more.

      Delete
  4. If we discuss over Politics, then it's not going to end, and May take fierce route. We have different view points and our society is associated with Politics, in one or many forms.
    We have one support, that is vote.. Use it wisely..!

    I am looking forward for change this time, want someone who can at least speak something and made some decision on his own. Hence, I am going to support.. You know, about whom I am talking about.. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Definitely, Saurabh, we all must use our vote wisely to choose the leader we think is good for us. I too am strongly inclined towards a particular party now, a kind of inclination which I never felt toward any political party so far.

      Delete
  5. The colors of Indian Politics are too varied. The thing is-there is no alternative now. We r short of leaders- the only possibility is to settle down for a good administrator albeit wid dictatorial tendencies as leader. And as stated above, we need to use our vote wisely. We mst not elect a khichdi govt coz it destabilises & pulls our country back many decades. Unfortunately, there are alliances like U write above but then it's jst that- plain politics, plain games to acquire the gaddi. Once that is got, decisive changes are to be driven & policies r not supposed to be sat over for a decade.
    Route taken to capture the helm maybe bad, yet after coming to the helm, it is pure decision-making for development. Every politicial party hopes for a vote, yet we vote for a hope. That India will progress to her max potential.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. India's progress - that's what I too want, Amrita. It is not the progress of any particular section, but that of India as a nation. A strong nation without fissiparous tendencies... a nation which need not think of religion at all as a public affair or determining factor...

      Delete
  6. Very true...It simply reminds me of Orwell's Animal Farm. How true it was! What achievement and who will raise..... when all the hands are pretty filthy!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We have, in fact, created a kind of Animal Farm, Anupam. The basic ideologies have been forgotten and alliances of convenience are being forged.

      Delete
  7. Ambition is for politicians and traders. It is not for persons of Constructive Creative Vocations.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I don't think Modi is without faults but I believe we have to choose the best from the worst! It doesn't mean that it's the best option unconditionally.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. TINA factor, Pankti... Well, a group of my young students of class XI said the same thing yesterday while discussing politics after dinner. I told them that I would accept Modi only if he acknowledges his error and promises to look after the welfare of all communities in this country which has too much variety for a man like Modi to understand and appreciate. Majoritarianism is something that I won't ever accept.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af