The Modi juggernaut is on a roll! Every opinion poll now by the day is predicting higher and higher seats for Modi! And yet, the English media is not going all out in support of him and his achievements. There are still detractors trying their best to project him as a mass murderer and as an anti-Muslim. First things first. That’s not a fact. What happened in Gujarat was a tragedy of the highest proportion; but most unfortunately, such riots are a frequent occurrence in Indian politics since Independence. And Modi happened to be there in Gujarat as a new Chief Minister in the middle of a very unfortunate event in Indian history. Yes, Rajnath Singh has offered to apologise for any mistakes that his party may have committed against Muslims. However the irony of that tragedy also is that while Gujarat has roughly 10% of Muslim population and 90% Hindus, the number of Hindus and Muslims killed in the riots were approximately the same. That means that the fraction of the population of rioters amongst the Hindus was one tenth that of the Muslims. So while all killings were very tragic, it wasn’t really about Hindus killing Muslims as has been falsely propagated by the English media over the years. Keeping all this aside, one should also note that Gujarat has amongst the best ratios of Muslims per capita population in the police and in government jobs. It is a state where Muslims are living in peace and dignity and are getting far better access to education and employment opportunities than in any other state. Truly, Gujarati Muslims are actually not anti-Modi.
I think it’s quite pertinent here to repeat a few lines I wrote some months ago in one of my editorials. I feel that the Modi versus the rest is a battle between “India” and “Bharat”. Modi personifies Bharat while the English media symbolizes India. The English media is now a jousting voice of the old feudal India which gloriously claims to know what is best for India. Modi represents the other India that I talk of – Bharat – which is embittered by the illicit monopoly that the English media and its suppositious ‘secular’ warriors hold over information.
What is India? If one were to go by the English media, India should never have happened – it is a geography, an ungovernable one for that matter, where concepts like religion, caste and ethnic identity are ranked higher than humanity. And then of course there is the almost 70-year-old Nehruvian Network to fall back upon for the India-brawlers. The Nehruvian network has been gnawing away and embedding its position in India since before 1947. It’s led by a philosophy that believes that the British systems, processes and procedures were the best. In my past editorials, I’ve referred to people aligning with this network as the ultimate “Desi Sahebs”, convinced that Indians needed to be more civilised. The sarcastic snigger is ever present when some politician like Uma Bharti, Mayawati or, in this case, Modi rises up from nowhere without worrying about the lack of English communication skills, and yet manages to impress voters. For the Nehruvian network, it would have been so wonderful had only the progenies of impeccable English speaking bureaucrats and politicians been there to dictate the direction of the State.
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I think it’s quite pertinent here to repeat a few lines I wrote some months ago in one of my editorials. I feel that the Modi versus the rest is a battle between “India” and “Bharat”. Modi personifies Bharat while the English media symbolizes India. The English media is now a jousting voice of the old feudal India which gloriously claims to know what is best for India. Modi represents the other India that I talk of – Bharat – which is embittered by the illicit monopoly that the English media and its suppositious ‘secular’ warriors hold over information.
What is India? If one were to go by the English media, India should never have happened – it is a geography, an ungovernable one for that matter, where concepts like religion, caste and ethnic identity are ranked higher than humanity. And then of course there is the almost 70-year-old Nehruvian Network to fall back upon for the India-brawlers. The Nehruvian network has been gnawing away and embedding its position in India since before 1947. It’s led by a philosophy that believes that the British systems, processes and procedures were the best. In my past editorials, I’ve referred to people aligning with this network as the ultimate “Desi Sahebs”, convinced that Indians needed to be more civilised. The sarcastic snigger is ever present when some politician like Uma Bharti, Mayawati or, in this case, Modi rises up from nowhere without worrying about the lack of English communication skills, and yet manages to impress voters. For the Nehruvian network, it would have been so wonderful had only the progenies of impeccable English speaking bureaucrats and politicians been there to dictate the direction of the State.
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