Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, was already a controversial figure before the BJP nominated him as party candidate for post of prime minister. But ‘controversial’ to whom? And for what?
The constant attacks on Modi have actually had the reverse effect of increasing the popularity of what otherwise would have been one of many chief ministers; prominent in India but not so well known outside the country. Instead Narendra Modi has become popular among all India’s various communities, castes and social groups.
He has become an icon for Hindus outside India and in fact all the vitriolic attacks have only served to create the opposite effect of uniting them behind him, and indeed uniting Hindus. This is not what the Hindu-haters expected or wanted.
This is in addition to his record in office by which he has delivered a comparative economic success story while the rest of India has largely floundered in a stagnant quagmire of nepotism and corruption.
Labour MP for Brent Barry Gardiner invited Narendra Modi to Britain earlier this year. The Indian newscaster covering the event was made to look rather stupid when she accused Modi of being guilty of crimes because it was Mr Gardiner who actually corrected her when he mentioned that the chief minister of Gujarat had actually been cleared of crimes by the Supreme Court of India. This is the highest court in the land, the end of the line.
That was after winning cases in lower courts. This is how justice in a democratic state works as opposed to Stalinist show trials.
But has not the castigation of Narendra Modi been a media show trial that would have made Stalin or Mao proud? Are these ‘secularist’ Indians trying to outdo their very own Marxist pantheon in constantly saying Modi is guilty of some imaginary set of crimes?
Modi has been stigmatised by supposedly mainstream media outlets such as the BBC as a fascist dictator who believes in Hindu supremacy and Hindu nationalism. These amorphous terms however tell us little about the irrational animus against him. Despite the use of social media and globalisation of information, in fact perhaps because of it, these mythical hate labels have only increased.
The BBC and other western media lazily rely on news from India’s minority and culturally dislocated Anglophone elite who remain ideologically Marxist in their analysis of everything. Now the way this works is that anything that smacks of India’s ancient indigenous culture, beliefs and traditions is disowned as backward, misogynist and intolerant.
Modi is said to typify the danger of this Hindu nationalism and fascism, which is the vehicle of high-caste Hindus to oppress and even exterminate the Dalits as well as minority Christians and Muslims. The ‘proof’ of this is said to be Modi’s active role in massacring Muslims in his own state in 2002 following the burning of the Sabarmati Express. Despite widespread calls for his resignation, including by the ruling BJP’s coalition partners of DMK and Telegu Desam Party, Modi refused to comply.
High-Caste Hindu Fascism?
Well if we want proof let us just look at the facts as any responsible report should do. In February 2002 the state of Gujarat in India was convulsed by horrific violence. Both Indian and western media were almost unanimous in laying the blame on the state’s chief minister, Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
According to an official estimate, 1044 people were killed in the violence. On 11 May 2011 the Times of India reported that 254 Hindus and 790 Muslims were killed. Another 223 people were reported missing, 2,548 injured, 919 women widowed and 606 children orphaned.
BBC news said that human rights groups complained of the authorities failing to take measures to prevent retribution against Muslims. However unofficial figures have put the number of deaths nearer to 5000. Most of those killed were said to have been Muslims and the whole carnage has been painted as a pogrom by Hindus against the Muslim minority in which Modi was not just complicit but actively involved in the massacres with his police both ignoring calls from besieged Muslims or even deliberately shooting members of that community.
The violence that shook Gujarat was horrific, nauseating and extremely disturbing. As India entered the twenty-first century this state was a model of comparative prosperity. Stuff like this was meant to be staved off by a growing economy. But when we examine the facts further it just gets more sinister
Crime against Humanity, but which ‘Humanity’?
In March 2005, Modi was denied an American visa for his alleged complicity in Gujarat’s sectarian violence in 2002. Interestingly, the refusal of the visa came just two days after the visit to New Delhi of then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Modi’s tourist and business visa issued in 1998 had been revoked and there was no chance he would be issued a diplomatic visa either. But the American government held firm saying the decision had been taken under the provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, “Under which any foreign government official responsible for serious violation of religious freedom is ineligible for a visa.”
The state department elaborated: “The US law is clear that states or government officials responsible for carrying out serious violations of religious freedom are ineligible for a visa.” The ban remains in place today. Yet this has not stopped others openly explicit of these violations from visiting America and indeed being feted.
The USA falls over itself to welcome leaders from China, where Tibetan Buddhism has been suppressed and in many cases annihilated. China, where the manufacturing economy owes much to low wages, squalid factory conditions, and the slave labour of the concentrations, is granted most favoured trading status by the leader of the free world.
This is the same country where the indigenous inhabitants of Tibet and Xinjiang have been marginalised and demographically squeezed. Pakistan has long discriminated against its minorities. Indeed that state was born on the ashes of Hindus and Sikhs massacred, expelled or forcibly converted.
Yet America has been proud to have Pakistan as an ally against terrorism even as Hindus, Sikhs and Christians were being systematically raped, murdered and mutilated by official sanction in that state. Saudi Arabia bans any religion apart from Islam being practised. Yet once again it is an ally. So why all the emphasis and ‘special treatment’ for Narendra Modi. This was despite the efforts of lawmaker, Republican Congressman and darling of the Tea Party, Joe Walsh
The Indian American Muslim Council gloated in April 2012 when its efforts to prevent Modi from gaining a visa were endorsed by Hilary Clinton. But one of the prime movers against Modi’s entry was Angana Chatterji. Born in Kolkotta, Chatterji joined the California Institute of Integral Studies in 1997 to teach anthropology. In 2005 she helped form the Coalition Against Genocide to prevent Modi’s entry into America with her report on the Gujarat violence blaming Modi and Hindu nationalism for the pogroms.
These efforts helped in the eventual aim of banning the state’s chief minister. Chatterji herself is an interesting and ominous figure in all this, being part of India’s very own dislocated Anglophone elite. She is s the daughter of Bhola Chatterji, a socialist and Indian freedom fighter, the great-great-granddaughter of Gooroodas Banerjee, a judge and the first Indian Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta. She grew up in a family of mixed castes and with Hindu, Muslim and Christian members. However this did not extend tolerance to the Hindu side of her ancestry one iota. Disowning one’s Hindu roots is an essential component to ‘secularism’ in India.
Chatterji’s own career is typical of India’s Swiss bank socialist kleptocracy who keep the masses mired in poverty while they enjoy the nepotism and corruption which absolute power brings. From her graduation until 1997, she worked as director of research at the Asia Forest Network, an environmental advocacy group. During this period, she also worked on various specific assignments mandated by the Indian Social Institute and the Planning Commission of India. Like so many Marxist academics who fulminate against the neo-colonialism of the west, she moved to the heart of the demon itself, America, joining the staff of the California Institute of Integral Studies in 1997.
Here she brainwashed the students with her academically bankrupt take on social and cultural anthropology where she could push views of race, gender and religion down the throats of her unwilling victims, known as students. But America is of course not India where Stalinist professors in the humanities and arts ruthlessly suppress any independent hinking. In western countries the youth are actually taught to think constructively and creatively.
Student complaints about Chatterji and her live-in partner Richard Shapiro mounted. The CIIS Faculty Hearing Board found them guilty of failure to perform academic duties and violation of professional ethics. 39 Anthropology students from a Department of 50 retained legal counsel to take action against CIIS.
Unfortunately back in India the Stalinist likes of Chatterji can be cloned multiple times. Instead of creative thinking, entrepreneurship, initiative and challenging accepted theories which then allows the pursuit of knowledge as an end in itself, we have mimicry. Basically if Chatterji bought a blue refrigerator, her students would also be expected to buy the exact same product. For such people the Berlin Wall never fell. Glasnost and perestroika never happened. China liberated Tibet. North Korean gulags do not exist.
Anglo-American imperialism is responsible for all wars. They speak of equality and casteless society while being served tea and having their floors swept by poorly paid servants. Instead of looking at reforming India’s antiquated colonial style laws and infrastructure, they ire at the threat of Hindu fascism which Modi supposedly represents. Unfrotuantekly due to their mastery of the English language, this small elite not only dominate India’s media and academia, as well as a large part of its hereditary (that is right ‘hereditary’ and ‘socialist’) political class, but feed the same misinformation to the mainstream media in western democracies. They also feed and influence western ‘experts’ on India.
India’s Real Fascists and their Western sympathisers
It was French philosopher Georges Sorel who as the twentieth century dawned, wrote ‘Reflections on Violence’ forging syndicalism as the ideological bridge between socialism and what became fascism. This is alive and well among India’s socialist English-speaking elite. Modi was held responsible for not just communal violence but genocide.
Now ‘genocide’ is a strong word to use and its connotations with the Third Reich are not accidental. The violence which wracked Gujarat in 2002 began when a train, the Sabarmati Express, was set on fire on 27 February 2002 at the rail station in Godhra. On 18 September 2008 a report by justices GT Nanavati and Akshay H Mehta (http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/sep/27godhra.pdf ) mentioned this:
“A ghastly incident of fire in coach S/6 of Sabarmati Express train happened in the morning of 27-2-2002, near Godhra railway station, in which 59 passengers travelling in that coach were burnt alive. Amongst the victims 27 were women and 10 were children. Other 48 passengers had also received injuries. Most of the victims were Ramsevaks (also referred to as Karsevaks).”
Yet on 22 March 2002 Ian McDonald, lecturer in politics and sociology at the University of Brighton wrote this in the Times Higher Educational Supplement:
“The horrific fate of nearly 60 Hindus on February 27 cannot compare to the subsequent pogrom waged against the minority Muslim community, in which whole families, including children, were dragged out of their homes to be beaten and burnt alive.”
McDonald was not satisfied with saying Hindu life was of less value. The Hindus that died were not just subhuman but they deserved their grisly fate:
“Contrary to many reports on the subject the Hindus travelling on the Sabarmati Express were not pilgrims making their way to Ayodhya to pray in peace. They were ramsevaks, members of the 
politico-religious VHP (World Hindu Council) for whom the construction of a temple where once the Babri Masjid (mosque) stood is but the first step towards a fundamentalist Hindu state.”
The rest of ‘A nation on the brink?’ (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=167911§ioncode=26 ) is littered with anti-Hindu vitriol. The VHP was guilty of the “terrorist destruction of the Babri Masjid”. Indeed the Godhra violence was part of a lab experiment by Hindu forces of which the Ayodhya movement was the antecedent.
McDonald brings up the old bogey of Hindutva as a direct offspring of the interwar fascist and Nazi movements which plagued Europe.
The following year McDonald published ‘Hindu Nationalism, Cultural Spaces, and Bodily Practices in India’ in the American Behavioral Scientist (http://www.sagepub.com/mcdonaldizationstudy5/articles/Health%20and%20the%20Body_Articles%20PDFs/McDonald.pdf ). where he castigates Dr. Koenraad Elst as an RSS apologist especially for its Nazi connotations.
I
ndian filmmaker Rakesh Sharma made a documentary on the subject in 2004. Called ‘Final Solution’ it was pretty obvious in its ideological slant, comparing Godhra to Nazi atrocities and blaming the whole scenario on Modi. The Nazi connections are made very clear on Sharma’s web page to the film http://rakeshfilm.com/finalsolution.htm:
“During the making of this film, I noticed shocking parallels between India 2002-2004 and Germany of the 1930s – State-supported genocidal violence against Moslems in Gujarat and its continuing impact – segregation in schools, ghettoisation in cities and villages, formal calls for economic boycott of Moslems and attacks on intelligentsia by right-wing Hindutva cadres. Unchecked and unchallenged, the rapid rise of politics of hate and intolerance could very well be the forerunner of a 21st century Endlosung – the Final Solution.”
Sharma’s documentary and subsequent interviews focus on Muslim victims, as if there were no Hindu casualties. Even when they are admitted Sharma parallels anti-Hindu bigots such as McDonald by excusing them as revenge for attending Ayodhya.
So basically anything remotely Hindu is fascist. Anything remotely Hindu is a legitimate target. Hindus do not count as full human beings. Even being Hindu is a crime worthy of death as Ian McDonald flippantly dismissed the death of innocent pilgrims on that train. Being on that train on pilgrimage literally invited the mob attack. Can human depravity get any lower? Why the scapegoating? Why the storm of unending anti-Hindu hate? We have been here before and that time it ended in the gas ovens of Auschwitz and Europe devastated in material and human terms.
The ‘Fascism’ of Godhra
Now on the use of terms such as “right-wing” and the brazen connotations with fascism, this is not only an insult to the very victims of the actual Holocaust death camps but is itself a flip side of the Leftist anti-Semitism which has gone mainstream. Replace ‘Hindu’ with ‘Jew’, ‘Israeli’ or ‘Zionist’ and you might as well be reading the myriad of apologists for Palestinian terrorist outfits such as Hamas and their conspiratorial theories about Jewish and American (the two overlap quite a bit) world domination.
The similarities in anti-Hindu hate with its more common anti-American and anti-Semitic counterpart actually comes together in an extraordinary vortex of hate. Nikhil Chakravartty is a veteran Indian journalist who founded Mainstream magazine in 1962. On 15 November 2008 the article ‘Terrorism Inc.: Nexus between CIA and Mossad’ by Shyam Chand not only claimed the same Israeli security firm was in charge of American airports, the London underground and Madrid train station when they were attacked by terrorists.
He quotes the same American anti-Zionist Les Visible as saying that five Israelis “were found celebrating the assault of the WTC”. Chand is a former minister of Haryana and the author of ‘Saffron Fascism’. As such he has used the magazine to invent new anti-Semitic conspiracy theories where Mossad is linked to the Hindu nationalists of the RSS (http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1045.html ):
“After the BJP came to power in 1998 India shifted its international stance considerably and moved towards close military relationship with America and its Israeli client. Brijesh Mishra, National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Vajpaee, established in Washington a ‘triad’—neocons, Jews and saffron fascists—to take on the Muslims in India.”
On 12 September 2003 the leading Indian Muslim online newspaper, Milli Gazette, carried an article by Ashraf Abbas entitled ‘Gujarat Riots: was there an Israeli Connection?’ (http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/01082002/01082002080.htm ):
“The common thinking of Muslims living in riot-affected areas of Gujarat is that the butcher of Palestinian Muslims, Israel, is directly involved in these terrible anti-Muslim riots. It is quite possible that some people may consider it a flight of fancy but those who have observed the conditions prevailing in Gujarat and have a deep understanding of the Indo-Israeli relations, do not consider it a remote possibility.
According to informed sources, Narendra Modi was in Israel for some time before being appointed as chief minister. A few months ago hundreds of youngmen of Gujarat were sent to Israel ostensibly for agricultural work where they were imparted special training. These youths imbibed with Hindutva played an important role in the burning of Gujarat. A citizen of Ahmadabad badly affected by these riots said that some packets of the dangerous chemicals used by the rioters had been found with ‘Made in Israel’ mark on them. The seriousness of the issue can very well be judged after the discovery of these facts.
Famous defence analyst having a close watch on Israeli defence matters, Hisam Swelm, in one of his new books on Indo-Israeli relations has expressed deep concern over India’s growing relations with Israel which can prove very dangerous, and even fatal, for India itself. Swelm has regretted that for Hindutva rulers of India, four million Jews of Israel are more important than 1.04 billion Muslims and 54 Islamic countries.
It is worth noting that previous Congress governments of the country had been very cautious in maintaining relations with Israel. However, during the past three or four years, the warmth and enthusiasm with which the ruling BJP has given importance to its relations with Israel and increased their mutual cooperation in defence affairs and fields, has created doubts among secular circles of the country.”
He continues:
As a matter of fact it is our rulers’ anti-Muslim proclivities which make them interested in treating Israel as their closest ally. If you want to see the moral qualities of a person, you should see his or her friends. When we look at it in this context, a terrible picture emerges because India’s new and close friend is Israel, which is thirsty for innocent Muslim blood. Israel has justified everything for the fulfilment of its Zionist objectives, which can never be fulfilled through righteous means.
This country’s government, which believes in Hindutva, is also proud of its new relationship (with Israel) because the net gain of these relations has already been received by the champions of Hindutva in the form of recent riots in Gujarat.”
On 28 April 2012 the same extremist publishing outlet added a few new refinements to its fear of Jewish world domination using Hindu foot soldiers. Taking an editorial from the Urdu language ‘Sahafat’ of 23 March 2012, the Milli Gazette warned that the ‘Zionist Lobby and Sangh Parivar are the Same’ (http://www.milligazette.com/news/3572-zionist-lobby-and-sangh-parivar-are-one-and-same ):
“Every one knows that Narendra Modi had tried twice to go to America but was unsuccessful. America refused him visa because the American administration also considered him guilty of the massacre of Muslims and hence he could not be allowed into America. Subsequently, however, the American embassy in India sent a secret report to the American administration about Modi in which the embassy reportedly said that the American administration should now change its stand on Modi. It is worth consideration what factors could have influenced the American embassy in India, though belatedly, to realise the importance and value of Modi.
Was it only because of the efforts of the Gujarati lobby in America? Even if so, we will have to admit that like the Zionist lobby, there is a Gujarati lobby also in America which too has become capable of influencing the American administration. It is also true that people in the Zionist lobby itself have a soft corner for Modi. In addition to this, the relationship between the Zionist lobby and Sangh parivar is no secret now and the common interest binding both of them is the anti-Muslim feeling.
Israel’s attitude and behaviour towards Palestinians in the past, and even now, is more or less the same which was adopted by Modi towards Muslims in Gujarat misusing his official powers. If the above mentioned report of the American embassy in India is seen in this background, it will be clear that this report was the result of the common lobbying and efforts of Zionists and Sangh Parivar which made the American embassy officials realise the importance of Modi.”
The Milli Gazette’s virulent anti-Semitic and anti-Hindu hatred has been an inspiration to others. On 17 September 2003 Kareem M. Kamel, Egyptian freelance and currently assistant to the Political Science Department at the American University in Cairo referenced Abbas when he penned ‘Israeli-Indian Alliance: the Real Axis of Evil’ (http://www.mombu.com/religion/arabic/t-the-real-axis-of-evil-israeli-indian-alliance-movements-energy-false-numbers-islam-12141645.html ):
“Even within India, some sources noted that the anti-Muslim riots in
Gujarat in which scores of Muslims were killed and their properties
burnt by Hindu demonstrators, were supported by Israel. In fact, a few
months before the riots broke out, thousands of Hindus from Gujarat
were sent to Israel for agricultural work and eventually came back
with dangerous chemicals used in the riots with the “Made in Israel”
mark on them.”
Chatterji’s choice of Shapiro as romantic involvement was no accident. In the ivory tower dystopia two psychopathic bigots are often united sexually as well as ideologically. Before joining CIIS, Shapiro was director of humanities at New College of California and co-founder of the Jewish-Muslim Friendship Circle in Kashmir, where he has been actively engaged in interfaith alliance with Kashmiris.
Just as Hindus have had to contend with self-hating Indians with Hindu names such as Chatterji, the Jewish community has produced its own litany of anti-Semitic self-hating progeny since the time of Karl Marx himself. Interfaith alliance with Kashmiris?
Why could not Shapiro extend this to the indigenous population of Hindu Pandits eking out a miserable existence in refugee camps since 1989 when mujahedeen ethnically cleansed that entire population at gunpoint? Well with a partner such as Chatterji it is hardly surprising. She has done work on ‘Hindu’ violence in Orissa and Gujarat, but not on Hindus being victims in Kashmir.
Instead there she has concentrated on the India state’s brutality towards terrorists. On 30 August 2010, Chatterji was announced as a member of Advisory Board of the Kashmir Initiative at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy of Harvard Kennedy School. Yet again what about the Hindus of Kashmir? It is the same with that other paragon of Stalinism in India, Arundhati Roy.
While she rages at Modi for being a fascist responsible for genocide, she sheds tears over India’s decision to carry out the lawful execution of Afzal Guru for his 2001 attack on the country’s’ parliament. This from the pages of that British liberal and anti-Hindu colonialist newspaper, the Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/18/afzal-guru-dangerous-political-fallout ). For the American-based Frontlines of Revolutionary Struggle, which styles itself as “progressive” (read Marxist), Roy again directs anger at Modi as a fascist while openly sympathising with Maoist terrorists.
The dislocated Anglophone elite call Hinduism fascist and intolerant. Yet when Hindus complain about denigration they are finger wagegd and informed Hinduism has always been tolerant. Cannot this dysfunctional bunch of clowns make their contradictory minds up even about the Hindu Dharma and culture which they love to hate? It is the same with everything. They lecture all and sundry about India’s poverty.
Yet not only do they impede important structural reforms which will allow poverty alleviation to take place, they actually make huge capitalist profits collecting generous salaries and fees lecturing all and sundry about how India needs more state intervention in order to help the poor.
As well as pontificating about the threat posed by Modi, this also means extending populist bribes in the form of bribes at election time in the form of free food, alcohol and television sets. Another classic bribe is extending caste quotas to groups deemed backward and scheduled caste, usually the former untouchables now known as Dalits. Modi is the demon who threatens to put the Dalits back in their place.
All nations have their traitors, their fifth column, their Julius and Ethel Rosenbergs, their Anthony Blunts and Kim Filbys raised in the establishment with all its trappings and yet are alienated and disaffected from that very culture which nurtured them because of some naïve idealism, which easily morphs in selling their souls to the highest bidder. But in doing so they make one major flaw. Trapped in a suffocating ivory tower world of sycophants and fellow-travellers, they ignore that the world has moved on.
They ignore reality. This is exactly what has happened with the attack on Modi. For all the attacks on Modi as being the hero of high-caste Hindus, it turns out that he is nothing of the sort. He was actually the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi and his wife, Heeraben, in the low Ghanchi caste, who have traditionally been pressers and sellers of vegetable oil. Turning Modi into some sort of fascist dictator intent on imposing the rule of high-caste Hindus is about as convincing as claiming that Dr Martin Luther King was a hero for the Ku Klux Klan.
So What is Modi Really Guilty of ?
The hatred against Modi is fueled because he is a Hindu , an unapologetic Hindu, a proud Hindu and that’s what makes him guilty.
Despite all the accusations, Modi has worked hard to make Gujarat a model state, a prosperous one which will benefit all its inhabitants. But it has been a long hard struggle. Dr Ambedkar wrote India’s constitution, struggling against all the odds because of his caste, as the Mahars were considered untouchables.
But his talent saw him through and now he is enshrined as one of the founding fathers of modern India. How fitting it is then that Narendra Modi demonstrate that the poorest in India can still rise up and defeat the socialist and self-hating oligarchs that dominate Indian politics.
Damodardas Modi—ran a teashop at Vadnagar railway station, while Heeraben and the children operated the oil mill. Narendra also used to help his father in the mornings at the railway station and then went to school straight after. That is right. This supposed right-wing high-caste Hindu used to be a teaboy at the train station, while the families of Chatterji and Arunadhati Roy were being fanned and pampered by servants.
As Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi has made immense strides in improvement in the lives of millions. Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, professors of economics at Columbia University, have been impressed by the state’s economic performance, pointing to Gujarat’s superior performance in raising literacy rates when compared to other states in India and the rapid improvement of health indicators in Gujarat as evidence that “its progress has not been poor by any means.”. Gujarat has outperformed India as a whole in the rates of improvement of multiple human indicators such as female education, between 2001 and 2011. Furthermore, they state that dropout rates declined from 20% in 2001 to 2% in 2011, and Maternal Mortality declined by 32% from 2001 to 2011.
To attract foreign investment in Gujarat during his time as chief minister, Modi has made visits to countries such as China, Singapore and Japan. He visited China in November 2006 to study the Special Economic Zones that were planned to start in Gujarat, and also visited Switzerland in September 2007 and later in November 2011. A month after his visit of 2011, the Chinese Government released 13 diamond traders from India who had been jailed by the Shenzhen Customs, which Modi described as being the consequence of his diplomatic efforts and statesmanship.
In 2011, the Karachi Chamber of Commerce & Industry, impressed with the development of Gujarat, invited Modi to visit Pakistan and address prominent business leaders. They also asked him to consider a flight between Karachi and Ahmedabad, due to the historical cultural and economic relations between the two regions of Gujarat and Sindh. Modi wishes to help Pakistan out of its power crisis, especially in Sindh, suggesting Pakistan can follow the ‘Gujarat Model’ in two ways — Gujarat Solar Park and Kalpasar Project.
So if prosperity in the state is helping all sections of society why all the hate? Why all the venom. Modi is a vegetarian known for leading a frugal lifestyle and has a personal staff of just three. He is known to be a workaholic and an introvert. He also writes poems in Gujarati. Above all he lampoons the urban, English-speaking elite. That last point is important. Modi proves it is possible to break through the glass ceilings that India’s socialist elite caste have imposed on India. For them politics is a right to squeeze the masses whom they regard as subjects and not citizens, an important difference.
Modi represents someone who is not only in tune with India’s ancient cultural traditions, and a civilisation which has survived over thousands of years while others are not only found in museums, but someone who is taking India forward out of stale Victorian colonialist values of the Raj and into the hi-tech modern world of the twenty-first century. For dislocated elite figures such as Chatterji and Roy, and their western disciples, it is bad enough that Modi is a Hindu.
It is even worse that he is the one Indian politician with the foresight to see that prosperity and growth is the means to neutralise the very poisonous communal divisions which are the result of lack of opportuntiies and resources in India. That scarcity itself has been the result of the state shackling people’s energy through the infamous Licence Raj so beloved of the socialist Anglophone elite and the Stalinist professors who give them ideological sustenance.
Instead of prosecuting Modi it is the irresponsible members of this elite who should be shamed for being extremely responsible for keeping Indians in poverty for the years since independence, forcing them to turn to crime, sycophantic politics, or emigrate as exploited workers in the Gulf just to survive, while the kleptocrats and oligarchs siphoned the nation’s riches to overseas bank accounts and sent their children to the best private schools, then to inherit the political mantle. In short, Modi represents a meritocracy where skills, hard work and talent count more than the right family connections and ideological veneer.
Attacking Modi is thus a very thin camouflage for attacking Hindus as a whole. The Hindu-haters such as Chatterji and Roy are intent on destroying an ancient society and civilisation which has withstood every assault hurled at it over thousands of years.
That fact that Hindu civilisation is alive and kicking and not confined to being an exhibit in the museum such as the various statues to their socialist fatherland (Lenin, Stalin, Saddam) is what they find so hard to digest. It is the Hindu ethos of India which has made that country the world’s largest democracy and why unlike its neighbours and so many other former imperial colonies, India has not succumbed to military dictatorship.
Despite what the Stalinist professors preach from their ivory tower pulpits Hindus were never passive and actually fought back ferociously when they were suppressed. Wedded as they are to the linear view of time the socialist oligarchs fail to see this, that this is but one phases in history and that time is actually cyclical. Hindu civilisation has gone through many cycles. This is but one of them and each time it has come out stronger and rejuvenated. As it will again with Modi. And the likes of Chatterji and Roy will be even less remembered than the fatherland icons that were torn down when those dictatorships were finally overthrown and the masses could breath freely at last.
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