Mr Modi and Utopia

Speaking during a function in Raigad yesterday, Prime Minister Modi threatened the nation with more “difficult decisions.” 

From today's Times of India

A couple of days back, Steve Forbes, Editor-in Chief of Forbes magazine condemned Mr Modi’s demonetisation as immoral and theft of people’s property. 

A few days back, Wall Street Journal wrote that “Instead of factory openings or large new investments, the images that tell India’s current economic story include snaking lines outside banks, distressed workers migrating back to their villages, and tax raids on jewelers and officials caught with hoards of allegedly illicit cash.”

Today is Christmas, a festival that marks the birth of a man in whose name a major religion came to be founded.  Christianity has always upheld suffering as a virtue.  It has relished imposing more and more rules and regulations, restrictions and penalties on its people.  Its priests and other leaders love to threaten the faithful with ominous consequences if the teachings of the religion are not abided by religiously.  Listening to Mr Modi’s speeches these days, I’m reminded of the Christian preachers. 

In a way, Mr Modi is more Christian than the evangelical preachers.  While the latter sell suffering here on earth so that the believers can receive their reward in heaven, Mr Modi is selling suffering in order to create a utopia here in our country itself.  The heavenly reward is more credible than the earthly utopia. 

Mr Modi is trying to eradicate evil from the country.  He thinks it is possible to eradicate black money, corruption, greed, envy and a lot of other things which are integral parts of human nature itself.  Mr Modi is trying to become a Messiah, a god incarnate, who will clean the human nature of all evils – at least in Bharat.

Earlier when his obsession was confined to physical filth and garbage (Swachch Bharat, Clean Ganga, etc), most people must have thought something was going to happen since they were practical objectives.  Nothing happened, however.  Bharat has remained as filthy as ever.  So has the Ganga. 

A man who couldn’t even achieve very simple, practical goals is now going to clean up the Indian hearts and souls. 

We are going to face a tough future, it seems.  Nothing good may come of all this since greed is incurable and people will always find ways and means of hoarding money, black as well as white.  

In the meanwhile, we can entertain ourselves by boasting about the gargantuan projects such as the 190 metre statue of Shivaji in the Arabian Sea and the Sardar Patel statue in Gujarat.  Each will cost the nation about Rs 3000 crore.  We shall continue to waste our time standing in queues before banks and ATMS trying to take out our own money.  What is that suffering compared to the glory that awaits our nation in the form of great monuments?  Suffering is a religious virtue which can create a utopia in India.  Let us embrace it even as Jesus embraced the cross.  And wait for the utopia to take shape.

Merry Christmas.