By Sushil Kutty
The 72nd Independence Day was no different from the 71st or the 70th. That’s because the ‘Man’ on the ramparts of the Red Fort was the same who stood on August 15, 2014, ’15, ’16, ‘17 – Prime Minister Narendra Modi, often referred to as ‘Feku’ on social media. It isn’t slang which anyone would want to be saddled with. It says about you that you’re prone to throw empty words, make idle boasts and are generally unreliable.
Modi speaks a lot. Oratory is his strength. He makes a good speech. But like all good speakers, he loses himself in the words. So, Modi stating from the Red Fort on the 72ndIndependence Day that India will put an Indian – “man or woman” – in space by 75th Independence Day (2022), is taken with a pinch of salt. ‘Oh, is that so?’ is the response and if anybody is to blame for the note of doubt, it’s Mr. Modi himself.
There is debris lying in corners of the Red Fort – debris of promises made by Narendra Modi, hopes raised and hopes crushed. The PM is the sort of guy who gives hope to the common fellow. And hope is not something that should be given idly. There’s this Malayalam adage which says ‘Give an elephant, but never hope.’
That’s unless you’re damn sure you’re gonna fulfil what you gave hope for. More often than not hopes are dashed. And Modi, they say, is a dashing Prime Minister, who’s prone to raise hopes and then dash them to the ground. He started off with the Mother of All Hopes – Achhe Din!
People are still waiting for Achhe Din. Many have reached there, but those are mostly who already were among Achhe Din. The ‘common man’, who did not die with cartoonist R K Laxman, isn’t among the lot – the farmer who got ‘unrest’, the graduate who did not get a ‘job’; the Dalit who’s still oppressed; the Muslim who gets cow-lynched!
Achhe Din eluded these people, the majority of them. This even as signs and symbols of the glitter of Achhe Din made news on television. Like the Bollywood blockbusters which conquered folks the other side of the Great Wall of China, the only manmade feature on Planet Earth man can see from Outer Space. Now, Modi makes the promise an Indian will set eyes on the GWC!
But will Modi be there to announce that accomplishment? The most recent opinion survey says he’ll be around but not before he loses love-three – Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan – to Rahul ‘Pappu’ Gandhi. “Is the survey giving hope it shouldn’t to people who want to see Modi’s back?”
“Opinion polls? One predicted the Congress will win Karnataka, didn’t it?” asks the ‘Modi bhakt’. “They’re trying to pull water from a dry well.” He may be right. Opinion surveys are a television channel’s pastime. Every now and then, when TRP dips, a survey/opinion poll is served. Top anchors of the channel appear and proclaim what is nothing but ‘hope’ by another name.
Hopes are the death. There are certain characters emigrant in the West and a whole lot of them in Balochistan who Narendra Modi gave hope from the ramparts of Red Fort a couple of Independence Days ago. He raised visions in their breasts – at last India has woken up to the realization that the Balochs ought to get what they yearned for – Independence from Pakistan!
Nothing happened. Hopes dashed. Now, no Baloch talks big about India, no Baloch has glowing words for the Indian Prime Minister. Modi also gave hope to millions of Indians that Pakistan Occupied Kashmir will be cleared of the interlopers and Kashmir will be one whole again, an integral part of India from Srinagar to Gilgit. But the ‘hole’ in the Map of India remains and Modi has only a wobbly Kashmir Policy to show.
This Independence Day, he appeared to have come to his senses, the macho lost to the meaningful – “neither galli nor goli” to tame the Kashmiri unrest. That’s hope dashed for the 31% nationalists who voted him to power in 2014. That’s also hope raised for the azaadi-seekers in the Valley, the separatists and the militants, “un baimanon ko bhi doodh pilati hai Dilli.”
Today, on the 72nd Independence Day, large swathes of the “free” country are without hope – 4 million declared non-citizens in Assam, many of them who should rightly be Indians, but also thousands who shouldn’t have crossed into India illegally. The National Register of Citizens has not only raised hope but also fear. What’s in store is what’s in the mind.
Modi specializes in raising unrest in the mind.
There’s Kerala, God’s Own Country, awash in water; the Kochi International airport taken over by the Periyaar, a river on which songs have been written. Lakhs of the Malayali are today homeless, without drinking water – without hope. Modi alluded to them in his ID speech but words don’t quench thirst nor does it remove hunger – a paltry Rs 100 crore in central relief is hardly hope to cook an Onam Sadhya on.
Modi talks too much. He gives hope, too much hope. Leaders are expected to give hope. Announce big-ticket programmes – Sardar Patel’s statue. Bullet train. Indian in space. All these give pride to be Indian. But when there’s no food on the table and the odd farmer hangs by his neck to a lonely tree in the field, Modi cannot raise the tricolour and give hope. Then, they call him ‘Feku!’ (IPA Service)
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