Nero’s Fiddle and Modi’s Muddle

Nero could not have played the fiddle while Rome burned. The fiddle didn’t exist in ancient Rome, for one thing. Ancient Roman historian Tacitus wrote that Nero was rumoured to have sung about the destruction of Troy while Rome was burning. He added that it was probably just a rumour. History has enough evidence, however, to show that Nero did initiate some relief measures though the people of Rome didn’t trust him. The Romans thought that Nero had started the fire himself in order to clear the area for the Golden Palace and the surrounding gardens that he constructed there soon. More interestingly, Nero later put the blame for the fire on the Christians who were a disliked minority in Rome in those days.

Two thousand years later, Nero’s soul seems to have found its appropriate material counterpart in no lesser an avatar than India’s Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi. Modi is fast-tracking his Central Vista project in Delhi which will cost the nation Rs 20,000 crore but will give Modi his coveted Golden Palace along with hopefully a golden place for him in the country’s history which is being rewritten hastily enough. Even a pandemic that is threatening to kill thousands of people doesn’t seem to deter Modi from his pet projects. After all, history will forget pandemics and its faceless victims. Golden Palaces will remain proclaiming the glory of their builders.

Compared with the cost of Modi’s Golden Palace in Delhi, the Rs 2500 crore temple in Ayodhya whose foundation stone will be laid next week by Modi himself should not be a burden on the national exchequer. More and more people are being driven to starvation by a pandemic that has gripped the nation as badly as the entire world. Hospitals and rehabilitation centres should take precedence over palaces and temples: did anyone say that?

A couple of years back, Modi presented to the world the tallest statue which cost India a whopping Rs 3000 crore. The proposed temple for Modi’s god doesn’t consume so many crores, mercifully. In a sheer display of absurd irony, the statue was named for national unity. Never in the history of India has national unity been under threat as in the years of Modi Raj. Modi thinks he can bury certain bitter truths under 20,000 cubic tons of cement concrete and 25,000 tons of steel with 1700 tons of bronze coating. Yet another cosmic irony too: the whole Indian national unity thing was fabricated by the Chinese – Chinese technology and Chinese labourers. A colossal statue whose one big toe alone can accommodate the entire Kothie village that was displaced along with many others in the process of the construction of the humungous dam whose lake houses the Statue of Unity.

Oh, the dam has a story to tell too. The Sardar Sarovar Dam, one of the biggest in the world, was Modi ji’s birthday gift to the country! The new version of the old dam was dedicated to the nation by the Prime Minister on his 67^th birthday, 17 Sep 2017. The new version of the dam had displaced about 85,000 families, i.e., some 500,000 people.

The present pandemic has displaced more people from their workplaces. When these people are struggling to find a way ahead, our Prime Minister will be on the holy grounds of Ayodhya laying the foundation stone of a dwelling for a god who spent a substantial part of his actual life as a displaced person. Ironies are not new in Modi’s India, of course. Mercifully, Modi ji doesn’t know how to play the fiddle and has no inclination either. But he did sing about the battle of Kurukshetra when the pandemic was raging in the country.