Skip to main content

Modi, the Messiah


BJP has made a clean sweep of the Chandigarh municipal elections by winning 20 of the 26 seats.  Amit Shah has already declared the victory as the people’s approval of the demonetisation.  We should not disregard Shah’s declaration as the Hanuman’s natural devotion to his god.  In fact, BJP’s sweeping victory is an indication of things to come.  The party may end up winning many more elections in the coming months.  As many as seven states are going to assembly elections in 2017.

“An economic measure should be, and normally is, judged on the basis of how it benefits the people, and any measure that brings distress to the people is derided for that reason. What we find in the present case however is just the opposite: the more demonetization brings distress to the people, the more it is applauded for its wisdom and courage.”  Prof Prabhat Patnaik wrote recently in The Citizen.  [emphasis retained from the original]

There is nothing surprising about people accepting their distress voluntarily.  They may even ask for more suffering.  Provided there is a religious touch to it all.

Modi as the idol in a temple
in Gujarat last year
Mr Modi has carefully crafted an image for himself, an image which is that of a Messiah.  He is the Messiah in contemporary India for exterminating evil and upholding righteousness.  Millions of Indians see Mr Modi as the contemporary avatar of the eternal terminator of evil.  Once religion comes in, distress becomes necessary self-sacrifice, a sacred ritual.  You can’t get to the Paradise without accepting the self-sacrifice of jihad in Islam.  Christianity is explicit about the road to heaven being paved with thorns and pains.  Hindu pilgrimages aren’t devoid of suffering and sacrifices.

Sacrifice is accepted as a religious doctrine and necessity when Paradise is the goal.  That is why Indians have fallen in love with their distresses spawned by demonetisation.  That is also why Mr Modi is likely to remain a hero for many more years.

We should remember how an equation has been created between the suffering of the ordinary citizens with that of the soldiers at the border.  Yes, it’s a glorious war we are fighting.  That’s the message passed directly into the hearts of the people who are always willing to suffer anything provided there is a Messiah who assures them of the final victory.  And in this glorious war against a demoniac enemy, we have to embrace sacrifices such as standing in long queues before ATMs or enduring hunger for days.

When you transmogrify a people into an army of devotees fighting for a god, your victory is assured.  People love their gods and the gods' Messiahs. 


Indian Bloggers



Comments

  1. Your sarcasm is apt Sir. The rule (to be exact, the era) of Mr. Modi appears to be a labyrinth without a way out for the suffering commoners. The massess will continue to suffer and still continue to root for him. He is God, after all. Suffering is increasing only day-by-day on account of irrational and high-handed decisions imposed by the government but none of such decisions appears to be the proverbial last straw on the camel's back.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's also interesting how the Modi govt and its various machinery keep on changing decisions and yet people kowtow to them. One day they will tell us not to rush to the banks as there's time till Dec 30 and the next day they ask us to furnish reasons why we did not rush. One day's limit for exchange is not the next day's. Even the chameleon will be baffled by the govt's change of colours. Yet he gets worshippers. Only gods can afford to be so capricious and yet win so much adoration.

      Delete
  2. They have fine tuned the art of harassment..

    ReplyDelete
  3. "You can make a fool of a man many times; you can make fools of many men one time; but you cannot make fools of all men all the time", is what comes to my mind;) Let's see..there are many a slip..it's a long way..the masses are agitated:(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As Dickens said in Hard Times, it's the best of times and the worst of times. Maybe, after these hard times there will be the best of times. Maybe it's going to be much worse. Personally I'm not very optimistic.

      Delete
  4. Liked this post for its subtlety in the sarcasm..

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think the people are waiting for Dec 30 deadline for things to come to normal, face value of Mr Modi has still not faded but I have seen and talked to the people who were ardent Modi fan but now promises to not vote for him

    ReplyDelete
  6. Equating the results of chandigarh muncipal elections across the country and reading it as the sign of things to come is a wrong interpretation. The mentioned elections are not fought on national issues but local muncipality centric ones...Who knows ....there would have been no worthy candidates other than BJP in the fray..That could have been a reason.....Or being a muncipality which ofcourse is urbanised, it can be assumed that chandigarh would have had the infrastructure already in place to face the demonitisation drive..since many urban dwellers already use digital payment methods....And the middle class being major component of urban india today they wouldve already ushered in digital supporting the modi move..
    But state elections or lok sabha elections are different ball games......
    Here the rural comes in...those who are unbanked, illiterate, daily wagers, etc...
    Im trying to say that State elections vannal MODI kkittu 8 inte Pani kittum... Naadinuvendi kudumba jeevitham thyagam cheythu ennu kashtapettu undakkiya image ippol potti thazey veezhunna nilayilanu....
    Kaaranam, pothujanam,especially the women are thinking that Veedum, bharyayum makkalum onnum illathey ooru thendi nadakkunnavanu kudumba jeevithathinte kashtappadu onnum ariyan oru vazhiyum illa.....kids die in hospital due to lack of notes, elder ones are fainting in queues...pakshey ippozhum mallya, kallapanam ellam puratthu thanney.....

    His judgement day will come !! Annu karanju kaanichittu......bhaiyon bahano desh ke liye maine sab kuch choda ennokkey paranjal poi pani nokkedannu voter mar parayum..... especially rural !!

    ReplyDelete

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 Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...

Taliban and India

Illustration by Copilot Designer Two things happened on 14 Oct 2025. One: India rolled out the red carpet for an Afghan delegation led by the Taliban Administration’s Foreign Minister. Two: a young man was forced to wash the feet of a Brahmin and drink that water. This happened in Madhya Pradesh, not too far from where the Taliban leaders were being given regal reception in tune with India’s philosophy of Atithi Devo Bhava (Guest is God). Afghanistan’s Taliban and India’s RSS (which shaped Modi’s thinking) have much in common. The former seeks to build a state based on its interpretation of Islamic law aiming for a society governed by strict religious codes. The RSS promotes Hindutva, the idea of India as primarily a Hindu nation, where Hindu values form the cultural and political foundation. Both fuse religious identity with national identity, marginalising those who don’t fit their vision of the nation. The man who was made to wash a Brahmin’s feet and drink that water in Madh...

Helpless Gods

Illustration by Gemini Six decades ago, Kerala’s beloved poet Vayalar Ramavarma sang about gods that don’t open their eyes, don’t know joy or sorrow, but are mere clay idols. The movie that carried the song was a hit in Kerala in the late 1960s. I was only seven when the movie was released. The impact of the song, like many others composed by the same poet, sank into me a little later as I grew up. Our gods are quite useless; they are little more than narcissists who demand fresh and fragrant flowers only to fling them when they wither. Six decades after Kerala’s poet questioned the potency of gods, the Chief Justice of India had a shoe flung at him by a lawyer for the same thing: questioning the worth of gods. The lawyer was demanding the replacement of a damaged idol of god Vishnu and the Chief Justice wondered why gods couldn’t take care of themselves since they are omnipotent. The lawyer flung his shoe at the Chief Justice to prove his devotion to a god. From Vayalar of 196...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...