Modi has shown us the way: Extremism is not the answer
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Singapore speech and his November 27 Lok Sabha speech on the Constitution should open our eyes. Re-emphasising the supreme dharma as India First and the Constitution as the holy book, the prime minister has emerged as an icon of togetherness that India needs today. He focused on a development theme without the baggage of history.
But are we helping him with strong reactions and angry faces on TV screens?
Nothing works in life except moderation, whether it's your family or governance. The present scenario, where the debate on tolerance has turned into a debate on secularism is an opposition agenda we are happily strengthening. We forget, once in power, the mantra that should guide our daily yoga has to be the mantra of restraint and cool demeanour. Journalists and columnists who have perfected the ugly art of distortion and mis-representation would love to see us slip and say something that's music to them - they are delighted when we scream on TV screens and shout out the people whom we incessantly describe as anti-Hindu and often do not hesitate to question their patriotism.
This reminds me of one incident when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister and I was editing Panchjanya. We, in our newly found enthusiasm, were taking up themes of nationalism and those were the strong Swadeshi days discerning readers would recollect. And we published a cover story describing in our own way, which seemed to be a bit crude, how the previous Congress regime had hurt the cause of indigenous manufacturing and showed a Draupadi, as Mother India, being disrobed by foreign investors.
And we got a call. It was from PMO. The joint secretary asked if the prime minister could speak to the editor Tarun Vijayji. I said yes please, we knew Atal ji was our first reader and often he would call us to comment on our editorial or the stories. His well recognised voice on the phone enthralled us. He said, "Vijayji, what are you doing? Is this the way to describe our love for Swadeshi? Are we dead? Disrobing Mother India can only happen over our dead bodies. This is bad." And he hung up. We were shaken. Never again did we go to such an extreme.
Whatever we had been saying or doing, we must understand people liked us because there was a powerhouse of hope - giving development and prosperity to all. His name is Narendra Modi. We, in our wrongly channelled enthusiasm, forget that it was his great tapasya and sadhana, his whirlwind tours and his personality, that awakened Indians and made them vote for him.
If some amongst us feel that his contribution has been as much as Modi’s, they are deceiving themselves and the people around them. The victory that arrived in our courtyard was a victory earned by Modi. His incredible energy, his power to connect with people, his undiluted love and transparent heart, his hard work - everything benefited us all. We are simply receivers of his benevolence. During elections, when tickets were distributed to candidates, they were unhesitatingly said, we can win if once Modiji addresses a public meeting in our constituency. I know one MP from my state, Uttarakhand, who said, "Bhaisaheb, frankly I didn't have to spend any money nor did I work hard. I do not know how I won. People simply voted Modi and I reached Parliament."
But once we taste power, we forget all this. We forget power has its own demands. Arrogance, jealousies, hate for each other, becoming inaccessible - are all part of the power corridor’s architecture. Congress fine tuned it having been in power for so long. But its history is replete with divisions, hate campaigns, losing elections, huge and massive corruption charges, bickering among top leaders including Pranab Mukherjee and Sharad Pawar leaving the party and creating new outfits. It overcame all that due to the disunity in the opposition and lack of leadership that would give a ray of hope against the misrule of the family fief.
The gravity of shouldering power is too much. The understanding of it at our level is too poor.
Even the Aamir Khan episode, and I also accept having fallen into the trap, could have been handled more articulately. Simply ignoring it with a shock at the bewildering statement of the superstar, who is what he is because everyone loves him, without caring what religion he wears. The best counter to him has come from Vamsee Juluri in a daily, whose one line summed up the entire hurt of us all - "People like him should be responsible in their public pronouncements".
Similarly, the beef and Kalburgi episodes, were the creation of left-of-centre columnists, inherently opposed to the Modi government. The BJP and RSS had absolutely nothing to do with these incidents. Beef was raked up by a Muslim from Kashmir Valley, whose name never got mentioned in any debate. No one ever heard any case when Kashmir rulers had invoked the age old Ranveer panel to punish beef eaters in the Valley. Yet suddenly, like a pig or a cow meat thrown before a gurudwara or a temple to provoke violent reactions, this petition was admitted and a judgment delivered and lo and behold, without getting to know the real motives we reacted as if a war has commenced against Hindus. Do we know how many Hindu traders are helping the beef business and slaughter houses? It's better to keep silence. But whom did we delight with this debate? Only the opponents of Modi were happiest. They brought the national debate to their favourite themes - communalism, Hindu Rashtra, anti-Muslim rhetoric, and anti-minority face of the government.
Hindus are, by nature, moderate people. They hate any kind of extremism. They have survived all the vicissitudes of history, the invasions, massacres, annihilation of their communities, savage brutalities only because they had this trait in them - they never kept developed reservoirs of hate for their tormentors. It's debatable whether this is good or a bad virtue, we can go the other way and turn ourselves into a one room, one man ‘national party’, but I believe that the progressive and modern mind of the Hindu has made us move on, and brought us to witness that our age old traditions are alive and family values intact. Such faithful, modern, liberal Hindus feel threatened because a part of the rich elite and the media, which say they is secular, has been hurting the Hindu cause vehemently. But this a long term struggle and we shouldn't lose time in small battles. Neither our intellectual preparedness nor our governing abilities have been strengthened to face the well prepared and patient foes. It will be foolish to derail our own journey to help disruptionists.
Modi is trying his best to have the development, investment, education, health, and infrastructure debate established as the principal public discourse. I was on Al Jazeera the other evening and the other panelists said what they had to say. After the show, I received a reprimand from an unknown Twitter commentator - who said I spoke loudly as if I was on an Arnab Goswami show, forgetting it was Al Jazeera. And I admit, I was wrong. That's the problem. People who do not know us, watch us. And people who don't care about our ideology want us to behave, with more restraint, and ignore the provocations thrown by the Opposition in our way. Because we have to show we can rule and Opposition has to prove they can disrupt our journey. Should we oblige them or should we keep working on the mandate we have received?