Writing with honesty

The above was the title of an opinion piece published in The Guardian on 20 Oct 2023. After Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister, India’s rank in the press freedom index sank consistently and is now about to drown altogether at 161 out of 180 countries. The case filed against Ms Roy is based on some comments she made in 2010, thirteen years ago. When anyone becomes inconvenient for Modi because they dare to speak the truth on some platform or the other, Modi’s men from such agencies as the Enforcement Directorate or Income Tax or Central Bureau of Investigation will come with the handcuff.

Quite many journalists have been arrested after 2014 in India. For telling the truth. Many intellectuals have stopped writing for newspapers and other periodicals just because they don’t want to spend the rest of their life in the prison. No wonder you won’t find even bloggers giving you the truth. Bloggers in India seem to have become influencers. They are doing business instead of writing with integrity: selling products on blogs instead of streets. Some of them have chosen to become motivational writers. That’s good. A lot of people in India require motivation now even to go on living. No wonder, again, too many Indians are leaving the country to settle down abroad and very many of them are giving up their Indian citizenship too.

The other day, a TV news channel which I watch regularly in the evenings played an ad telling us that the Modi government is extending the free ration (food grains under the public distribution system) scheme “for 80 crore poor people of the country for five more years”.

‘What shit!’ was my instantaneous reaction.

Maggie asked, ‘Isn’t that old man doing something good now? Why do you question him all the time?’

‘He has been ruling this country for nine years now. And 80 crore people of India are still so poor that they require free rations for another five years? Do you know how much is the total population of India?’

‘140 crores,’ Maggie said.

‘So more than half of that population don’t even have the money to buy their food! Why’s this old man of yours then bluffing the whole world saying that his country is going to be some trillion-dollar-economy?’

‘India is going to be an economic superpower,’ Maggie asserted.

‘True. At the cost of the country’s 80 crore poor people who will continue to be beggars of the government. This is what Arundhati Roy said: Modi’s “model is violent Hindu nationalism underwritten by big business.” The big traders are the only real beneficiaries of your old man’s system. They make more and more profits each passing day. Just yesterday we read that the Indian banks wrote off Rs 10.6 lakh crore in the last five years and that 50% of that humungous sum is linked to large corporates. Take the money of the poor and give it to the rich. That’s the old man’s strategy. He supports the rich and the rich support him. Good arrangement. And they together will give free wheat and rice to the citizens.’ 

Maggie warned me. We are in India and there’s no way we can settle down abroad at this age. So keep quiet. That’s the meaning of the warning in short.

I guess I’d better listen to her. There’s no time left for me to spend in an overcrowded Indian prison now.

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 460: As a blogger, did you ever feel that you have an obligation to be honest about your writing? #BloggingHonesty