Stop telling Modiji what to do, please

On the lines of a trope popularised by the Sahitya Akademi award-deserving Rahul Gandhi, let me begin this column with an anecdote about a conversation during a train journey. As the August Kranti Rajdhani rattled along from Delhi to Mumbai, in the three-tier coach, with an orchestra of belches and snores in the background, there were heated debates about the Dadri lynching (a term tossed about with eerie detachment now that the emotions have had time to settle into self importance and opinion toting).

It is probably best to mention at the outset that all six men in conversation were vegetarian and all supported the lynching. (And the prime minister.)

Four of the six voices were clear that cows needed to be protected and if you committed the grievous sin of eating “someone’s mother” you would, and ought to be punished. “Someone needs to act to ensure this evil is curbed.”

“Ab Modiji khud aap ke ghar aa ke safaai thodi hi karenge, unko aur bhi kaam hote hain. Toh kisi ko toh logon ko thikaane laana padega,” was the general, overarching tone and line of discourse. Incidentals included the urgent need to exterminate all these terrorists that Pakistan is sending, a bizarre discussion on how stray dogs should not be treated well (don’t ask), accusations that fellow passengers never feed cows or take out time to donate to gaushalas and the near-satanic act of eating non-vegetarian food.

[Aside: As the dinner trays were served and perched on our laps, my co-traveller and I found that we were the only two in that compartment to have ordered a non-vegetarian meal. If you thought nothing could make train food tougher to digest, you’ve obviously never had 14 disapproving eyeballs practically glued to your heathen tray, reducing you to a puddle of toxic blasphemy.]

The conversation then moved, as it always does, exclusively to the prime minister’s silence on matters. There were, as there always are, divergent views on the subject. And the arguments vacillated, as they always do, between “law and order being a state subject” and therefore not his responsibility, his tacit (and “absolutely valid”) approval and finally, how the prime minister should say something, anything, on the subject.

In a fortunate turn of phrase, it’s safe to say this request is going off the rails. More than an appropriate number of open letters have been written and people are shouting over thumping EDM in bars to make sure their dissatisfaction with the prime minister’s silence is heard. The prime minister is a busy man. He has (quite literally) seen more of the world than you have. His tears bought a one-way ticket to Silicon Valley and cannot be shed to satisfy your trivial whims. Stop telling him what to do. Your open letters got lost in the mail and your emails are still stuck in the airwaves since Digital India is still rhetoric overseas.

Also, give him some credit. Owing to your incessant whining, he was recently forced to make a token statement. “The Dadri incident or the opposition to Pakistani ghazal singer Ghulam Ali are sad and undesirable. But what is the role of the central government in these incidents?” he told a Bengali daily.

As he panders to NRIs in every country from Australia to Timbuktu, Indians in the motherland are left feeling like neglected children, tugging annoyingly at the sleeve of a parent, screaming for the attention that is being hogged by their siblings who successfully “settled” elsewhere.

And as those neglected children, we hear nothing on the open shooting of rationalists, close-to-nothing on the “Dadri lynching” and even less on the cancelling of concerts of Pakistani singers or protests over government-appointed institution heads. We do, however, hear lofty, eloquently delivered promises during rallies for the Bihar elections. Mr minister, it seems, is Mr prime minister internationally, but continues to be the leader of the party in power, locally.

So, stop being the pesky toddlers nobody loves, liberals. This shameless returning of awards and shameless opinion columns are not helping your cause. Your whining is falling on deaf ears (and a mute mouth). Stop telling Mr prime minister what to say. And give him a chance. It’s not as if he has the privilege of learning from a similar mistake made by his predecessor.

So, as would have been my advice to the six gents arguing into the wee hours of the morning as we tried to sleep - make like the PM, and shush.