Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife (A Critical Appraisal of Islamic faith, Indian polity) by BS Murthy (epub read online books .TXT) 📖

him, ostensibly ordained by Sonia to pave the prime way for her son, he had no qualms in appropriating to himself the 1991 economic reforms that were indeed fathered by his mentor PV Narasimha Rao.

If anything, that was true to his character.

But for Rao, who fostered him, by now he would have been a forgotten ex-governor of the Reserve Bank of India, one amongst many before him, not to speak of those who succeeded him. What a decent man’s morality would demand when his patron saint falls on bad times? Maybe, to leave the sinking boat is fine for a careerist politician but desertion wouldn’t be the in thing for any decent guy in his position, and that’s human morality is all about.

But what did the wily Sardarji do? With his mentor in dumps, he visualized greener pastures for himself in the shade of Sonia’s Bofors-tainted pallu. Well, it calls for no genius to foresee that the political dispensations of NDA ‘n UPA would have alternate reigns on the musical chair of the Dillii kursi and that when the latter’s turn comes; Sonia’s ‘foreign origin’ handicap would force her to concede the prized seat to someone else from her party ranks.

So what did the great survival artist do?

Not only did he distance himself from his lost out mentor but he unreservedly played the second fiddle to Sonia. Having privately ingratiated himself to her in every conceivable manner; he publicly declared that he’s not a ‘prime ministerial material’ in an idiot box interview, not once, but twice that was in case her ears fail to pick that up in the first instance. By the same token, Pranab Mukherjee paid the price for throwing his hat into the prime ministerial ring, presumably owned by the pseudo-Gandhis, not once but twice.

But then, what to make out of all that?

If he was secretly coveting the gaddi while publicly averring that he was not up to the mark, then he was cunningly self-serving. And if he genuinely believed that he was not a ‘prime ministerial material’ and still grabbed the job, then he was morally dishonest. Either way, he’s not a man of intellectual integrity or someone with moral conviction and /or both for which India has paid the price for having had him as its spine-less head for two decades. Maybe, he wouldn’t have coveted money for himself but all the same he served Sonia’s covetous causes and shamed the position of the Prime Minister, of the largest democracy on earth. That what made Modi famously characterize him as the one blessed with the art of bathing with a raincoat on him!

That’s not all; besides being servile to Sonia, the way he clung to his powerful seat, rendered powerless by her, disregarded by his own bureaucrats, disobeyed by his cabinet members, and humiliated by Rahul, he has ensured a premier place for himself in the Indian Hall of Infamy. But as he never seemed to have minded about his self-inflicted fate; he only should have known to what avail.

And to cap it all, when his mentor’s mortal remains were being abused by the vengeful Sonia, who never forgave Rao for daring to cut her dynasty to size, he turned his shameless head the other way. Such was the personal character, political ethos, and the morality of mind of this cunning man, who had conned India as the benign face of Sonia’s rākshas regime.

Hence, Sanjaya Baru should have known better not to name his book on his times with him as The Accidental Prime Minister, which title befits only PV Narasimha Rao, for when the call came from the just-widowed Sonia, he had already packed his bag and baggage to move into his political vanaprastha, and not his ex-deputy, who had been cunningly paving his servile path to 7 RCR.

 

Chapter 34

Rama Rajya

 

When the euphoria of Modi’s saffron triumph had subsided, the Hindu nationalists turned skeptical that it could be a flash in the Indian political pan, but not an enduring Hindu Rebound to bind Bharat’s caste-divisive electoral ground. But Modi, who apparently came to believe in his destiny as the chosen one to retrieve Bharat Māta from the abyss the rākshasa regimes pushed her into, had set a much higher and nobler goal - of Hindu renaissance - for himself, and what is more, began working in a mission mode to achieve that in a time-bound manner like a man possessed.

Just the same, he was no novice not to have realized the task on hand for the immoral mess that India became, which was best described by Rajiv Gandhi, its third generation dynast, in a famous speech at the Congress Centenary Session in 1985:

“Most of us, in our daily lives, do not think of ourselves as Indians? We see ourselves as Hindus, Muslims or Christians, or Malyalees, Maharashtrians, Bengalis. Worse, we think of ourselves as Brahmins, Thakurs, Jats, Yadavas and so on and so forth. And we shed blood to uphold our narrow and selfish denominations. We are imprisoned by the narrow, domestic walls of religion, language, caste, and region, blocking out the clear view of a resurgent nation. Political parties, State Governments and social organisations promote policies, programmes and ideologies which divide brother from brother and sister from sister.”

“The trader's instinct for quick profits prevails…. They flourish on sick industries. …. They feel little concern of the creation of national wealth, only for a larger and larger share in it. Nothing is considered illegitimate if one marches under the right flag. Power without responsibility, rights without duties (have) has come to be their prerogative”

“Teachers seldom teach and students seldom learn. Strikes, mass copying, agitations are more attractive alternatives. …Where there should be independence and integrity, there is the heavy hand of politics, caste and corruption…. Millions are illiterate. Millions of children have never been inside a school.”

“We have Government servants who do not serve but oppress the poor and the helpless, police who do not uphold the law but shield the guilty, tax collectors who do not collect taxes but connive with those who cheat the State and whole legions whose only concern is their private welfare at the cost of society. They have no work, ethic, no feeling for the public cause, no involvement in the future of the nation, no comprehension of national goals, no commitment to the values of modern India. They have only a grasping, mercenary outlook, devoid of competence, integrity and commitment.”

“Our administrative machinery is cumbersome, archaic and alien to the needs and aspirations of the people. It has successfully resisted the imperative of change.”

But more tellingly, as ‘brokers of power and influence’ have come to ride on the backs of congressmen, in Rajiv’s own words elsewhere, ‘out of one rupee spent by the government for welfare of the downtrodden, only 15 paise thereof actually reaches those persons for whom it is meant’. Nevertheless, while he had neither the will nor the ability to clean the Augean stables, his corrupt widow, in her decade-long proxy rule through her minions had made it stinkier.

Neither India was faring any better in its intellectual sphere owing to the Hindu cerebral laziness to grasp the antagonistic religiosity of the minorities - the Christian disdain for them as heathens and the Islamic dismissal of them as kafirs – whereby the debilitating phenomenon has been conveniently pushed under national secular carpet for Bharat’s bane. Besides, maybe fearful of being branded as Islamaphobes, Hindu left-libs became Islamapologists thereby tending to be indulgent with the craving of the Musalmans to carve out exclusive Islamic enclaves in India, be it in Kashmir, Assam, West Bengal, Kerala or wherever they are in considerable numbers. Besides, the Indian State too has come to look the other way as the minorities were deliberately working to expand their demographic domain – the Musalmans through an unbridled procreation as well as illegal infiltration from Bangladesh and Christians by way of calculative conversions - without let or hindrance. Moreover, sadly though, even its constitution, besides thrusting a multi-faith feather on the Hindu egalitarian cap, has been enabling the Musalmans and the Christians to wear their exuberant religious colors on their sleeves.

But yet, the Musalmans have come to cry hoarse over the Hindu resentment over their apparent demographic designs by preaching them the virtues of religious tolerance, read secular values, a constitutional obligation at that! Lo, it’s akin to the devil quoting the scriptures that is the good ones for there are many a devilish one therein in the Quran. So is the case with the Christian evangelicals, if anything as an intimidating tactic, albeit with a helping hand from the Indian left-liberals and their backers in the west, go to town over the ‘reprehensible’ religious intolerance of the Hindus. Though the mutually exclusive Christian and Islamic dispensations are antagonistic to each other, yet their protagonists worldwide have apparently ganged up in the spirit of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ against the vulnerable Hindus, perceived by both as their enemies.

It is in that setting Modi has started to set things right, and to start with, he has put the ‘last man’ first in his party ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya’s antyodaya vision with the ingenious Jan-Dhan Yojana, whereby the poorest of the poor are made integral to the country’s banking system through an individual ‘nil balance’ bank account linked to his or her Aadhar Card. Thus when Modi sarkār began to put the ‘money meant for the poor’ into these accounts through the ‘direct benefit transfer’ route, the downtrodden got their due. And being a dyed in the wool sanghi, Modi would have been well aware that the laudable measure alone would hardly make his regime the Rama Rajya of our era, the cherished goal of Hindutva, which Sage Vālmiki had chronicled in Ramayana for posterity thus:

 

Took care Ram of his subjects

No poor cousin was ever ignored. 

In his reign all lived full life
None was ruined by Acts of God.

 

Died no infant in his reign
Lived no dacoit to name one.
 
Reigned well dharma in his time
Gone were faction fights of yore. 
 
None was barren in his land
In scores bore women there children.

 

Took his name all day and night
Revered him all worlds to one man.

 
Climes all then put their best foot 
Dared not drought to visit his land.    
 
Lived all making best of life 
Shown was door to greed by all. 
 
Sense of fairness ruled as minds
Were there no mean in his reign. 

 

So as to near Rama’s role model, Modi, in his sab ka sāth, sab ka vikās spirit, had put in numerous public welfare schemes (yojanās) to ensure that the ‘last man’ amongst the poorest rank, of every caste and creed, has his own home with electricity, water, a toilet, and a cooking gas cylinder. Well, intended or otherwise, his idea to be sworn in as Bharat’s ruler, paraphrased as pradhān sevak by him, in the August presence of the heads of SAARC nations had the trappings of Rama’s Coronation, as described by Vālmiki thus:

 

Led by Vasisht high priest then
Ram ’n Seetha reached high throne.
 

One by one then twelve Vasus
And those grand seers eight of them
Perfused both of them with scents.
 
Then those elders let Brahmans
Virgins, nobles and Generals
Likewise perfuse them on throne.

Soon after were invited
Angels all to perfuse Ram
Seetha too with heavenly scents. 

 

The above are excerpted from the author’s Sundara Kānda - Hanuman’s Odyssey

 

Whatever, even as he focused on things mundane, he hasn’t lost sight of his divine mission to usher in the Hindu renaissance. That is besides setting out to retrieve the ‘languishing’ India from under the Islamic shadow into which Nehru-Azad nexus had willy-nilly pushed it by nipping its Hindu nationalistic impulses in the bud, perceiving them as offensive to the religious sentiments and detrimental to the political interests of the Indian umma.

So as to facilitate both, Modi proclaimed loud ‘n clear to the world at large that India has been an unbroken civilization for over five