Skip to main content

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. 
Indian Bloggers


Labels:

Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 25, 2016 at 10:45 PM

    Very true and an interesting point. This entire exercise by the government shows how a great vision can be implemented so badly.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 26, 2016 at 7:25 AM

      I'm wondering about the validity of the vision itself 😆

      Delete
  2. जितेन्द्र माथुरDecember 26, 2016 at 8:53 AM

    Perfect sarcasm Sir. And you are right in your comment that the validity of the vision itself bears a question mark. Perhaps all those who consider the Indian premier as a noble-hearted person pursuing some pious mission are mistaken. And he is not even pursuing RSS or BJP agenda. He is pursuing his own (hidden) agenda and not being dictated by any other organization or agency. He is a complex person and through his shrewedness and excellent marketing skills able to misguide a whole generation, a whole nation (or at least a sizable part of it).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 26, 2016 at 9:01 AM

      That's the right assessment of the man. Extremely ambitious, he has only been using the RSS as a stepping stone. Today the country is his stepping stone. To global heights!

      Delete
  3. Abhijit RayDecember 26, 2016 at 11:21 AM

    I think we are taking comments in Forbes magazine way too seriously. On an average, western press do not have much good to say about India. An over populated country, plagues by corruption, rampant maltreatment of women, unhygienic neighbourhood etc. You name it, it is here in India. Now what is new if they claim demonetisation is antipoor. So many years of poverty alleviation has brought us to a situation where one has to demonetise currency. Strangely, none of your sarcasm is directed towards rampant malpractices of the past. Is it your pet peeve that is showing? I wonder!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 26, 2016 at 11:43 AM

      Interpret it as you like, Abhijit. The simple truth is that i find Modi an amusing character study and I am a man of literature. Modi will be figuring soon in my novel as a character, a very brief appearance albeit.

      Delete
  4. Sneh AsnaniDecember 26, 2016 at 3:52 PM

    Completely agree !! Good post!!

    http://www.bootsandbutter.com

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
9 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse
8 comments
Read more

Kailasnath the Paradox

AI-generated illustration It wasn’t easy to discern whether he was a friend or merely an amused onlooker. He was my colleague at the college, though from another department. When my life had entered a slippery slope because of certain unresolved psychological problems, he didn’t choose to shun me as most others did. However, when he did condescend to join me in the college canteen sipping tea and smoking a cigarette, I wasn’t ever sure whether he was befriending me or mocking me. Kailasnath was a bundle of paradoxes. He appeared to be an alpha male, so self-assured and lord of all that he surveyed. Yet if you cared to observe deeply, you would find too many chinks in his armour. Beneath all those domineering words and gestures lay ample signs of frailty. The tall, elegantly slim and precisely erect stature would draw anyone’s attention quickly. Kailasnath was always attractively dressed though never unduly stylish. Everything about him exuded an air of chic confidence. But the wa
9 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
16 comments
Read more