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In early1980s, walking through the lush green fields, on crisp spring and summer mornings, on my way from the student hostel to the chemis...

Thursday, October 3, 2013

March to the end and a journey to fanaticism

It would appear from the media frenzy that Narendra Modi already is the prime minister of India. Even though the elections are still a few months away. The media seems to be lapping every single word uttered by that man. It would be a right time to do a kind of preliminary analysis of this dark phenomena and its potential consequences. The only plausible reason behind so-called appeal of Modi is his unambiguously notorious role in not only not stopping those 2002 riots in Gujrat but rather fanning those riots through his diabolical utterances and through criminal abdication of his duty as the chief executive of that province. And to this day he never uttered a single word of regret. That directly appeals the Hindu middle-classes who through sinister propaganda have come to percieve themselves as victims of a conspiracy hatched by minorities in particular Muslims. Otherwise, the Modi developmental model peddled by corporate media is nothing more than a charade. 

The real power behind the rise of Modi is dichotomous. The one branch belongs to corporate houses and they importantly control media, which is the reason for an all out build up of a farcical profile. Big corporates and businesses would be the one to gain enormously, should Modi and his party come to power. The minority rights and welfare of poor sections of the society are never part of their calculus. This joins with the perceived victim-hood of Hindu middle-classes who while sitting in their air-conditioned living rooms keep concomitantly pondering at their plight and curse poor of the country for stealing their prosperity and wishing unthinkable for the politicians for helping poor. That is the reason for them a small time corruption by politicians is more sinful than the loot by corporates.

The second power that has coalesced around Modi is that of hinduvta forces, though at some levels it intersects with the first one. The governing philosophy of those forces is utterly deranged and dangerous. As has been said by scholars, these forces do not believe in democracy and rather have always been admirers of fascism and Nazi socialism. Modi has risen from the ranks of these very obnoxiously sinister organizations. Their parent organization is the one whose member plotted, executed and celebrated the murder of Gandhi, who was also a Hindu but not their kind of Hindu. Nothing could be more reviling than Modi going through a pantomime of garlanding a statue of Gandhi. Modi stands and does or has done everything contrary to what Gandhi ever stood for, nothing more could have denigrated the memory of Gandhi than that farce. 

If Modi does at all come to power, it will be for India a march to the end. It can't be coincidence that all those who preach bigotry should join him on this journey to fanaticism.

-Rajiv Kumar