Martha Nussabum has called Modi’s election victory a black mark against Gujarat. What does black mark mean? Well, black is the color of niggers and other such filth and the voters of Gujarat by ignoring Nussbaum’s views (remember Nussbaum is WASP and blonde, only having converted to Judaism after marriage) have rejected the option to Whiten themselves. Instead they have been dirtied and defiled by a black mark.
Nussbaum herself knows how to whiten things- by using tipp-ex to cover over the truth. What happened was this. Nussbaum had previously testified in an American court that the word ‘tolmema’ used by Plato to castigate homosexuality carried no pejorative meaning. When taken to task for this obvious lie, she obfuscated the issue by claiming that she personally used an out of date lexicon, that of Liddell & Scott from 1897, rather than the one corrected and updated by Jones. This wasn’t true. When she verified her source and found she’d been caught in a lie, she simply tipp-exed out ‘Jones’ from the affidavit she submitted to prove she hadn’t perjured herself.
Liddell, Scott Lexicon of the Ancient Greek Language.
In other words, if not a shuffler and a liar and a fuckwit of Amartya Sen like proportions, it is clear that Nussbaum has little acquaintance with ordinary standards of honesty and truth telling let alone any higher notion of Alethia.
In the case of Narendra Modi- who, within a year of taking office as Chief Minister, put an end to the cycle of politically instrumentalized communal rioting in Gujarat which began in 1969 and was rewarded at the polls for it- Nussbaum simply ignores the facts and wishes the Gujarati voters too had tipp-exed over the them. Not to do so is indeed to earn a ‘black mark’ in her book. Yet, most Gujaratis can’t read her book. What they can do is vote according to their empirical knowledge and political convictions. If the Gujaratis wanted to go in for ethnic cleansing, no force on earth could stop them. They don’t want that. They don’t like riots. They don’t like rape and arson and murderous mobs. There was a Congress Minister of Fisheries back in the 90’s who engineered a terrorist attack in Surat so as to set off a round of communal rioting with the bombs being supplied by a prominent gangster with ties to a Karachi based Crime Lord. This gangster then killed an M.P who had blown the whistle on his activities. All three were Muslims. The gangster fled across the border because the killing of the M.P had angered the Union Home Minister. But he fell out with his Godfather there and returned to India. The Police, who had been in his pocket, bumped him off so as to prevent his testifying against them. Such was the rule of the ‘Secular’ Congress Party in Gujarat. It never cleaned up its act. It specialized in fielding tainted candidates- including Hindus involved in the post-Godhra riots. Congress wasn’t interested in Development. That’s why it got the boot. Modi had only been in office a few months when the Godhra outrage occurred. This was a couple of months after the attack on the Indian Parliament when India and Pakistan were close to war. Delhi suspected that Godhra had been orchestrated by the ISI so as to set off a chain of pogroms with the intention of paralyzing the transport network in the State by clogging it up with displaced people, thus hampering Indian troop movements. For this reason Modi and Defence Minister Fernandes had to take a strong line from the outset. This should have been enough to destroy Modi’s future in the State but something unexpected happened. By lifting curfew early and emphasizing the need to get back to business as usual, Modi sent a signal which the Gujarati entrepreneurial class welcomed. The alacrity with which he got on top of the Akshardam revenge attack- coolly putting all the blame on the Pakistanis- was the final straw which broke the back of politically instrumentalised Communal rioting.
Gujarati’s are to be complimented, not condemned, for finding a way to marginalize the lumpen, criminalized, political class and get rid of the periodic riots which empowered those bottom feeders.
I’m not saying Modi completely broke the nexus between the Police and land-sharks and bootleggers and so on. But he showed a way forward and the voters of his state rewarded him for it.
Nussbaum says that the Gujarati’s should pay greater heed to the outcome of recent Court trials rather than rely on their own memories and common sense. This is quite foolish. Gujaratis knew how things were done but didn’t want things to go on being done in that way. They voted for the man who brought about the change they desired.
Nussbaum learnt nothing from her tolmema debacle. She uses her tipp-ex on inconvenient facts and awards black marks to brown people.
Proof, as if more proof was needed, that Professors who talk Ethics are all worthless scumbags.
It appears that the Special Investigation Team has exonerated Narendra Modi from complicity in the post-Godhra riots.
So what?
The situation in Feb 2002 was as follows
1) Modi had been C.M for only a few months. He wasn’t firmly in the saddle. His following within his own party was small. He belonged to a numerically unimportant community and wasn’t playing the O.B.C card- indeed, few people would have known he was a ‘low’ caste Ghanchi.
2) After the Pak sponsored attack on the Indian Parliament in December, tensions between India and Pakistan were at an all time high. Gujerat is a border state. Thus, neither George Fernandes, as Minister of Defense at the Center, nor Modi as C.M (the usual fall-guy for communal violence, especially as he was a political light-weight in the State) could allow the riots to get out of hand.
3) Suppressing the riots meant Hindus- activists of his own party- might get shot. But, it had to be done. This was the only way to break the cycle of violence that began in 1969. I suppose it was convenient for everybody to leave Modi in place till elections were called. Nobody expected him to win by such a margin. Partly this had to some earlier initiatives which were bearing fruit, but- in the main- it is because suppressing riots with a hand of iron is part of Good Governance- like clamping down on kidnapping as a heavy industry. It’s the sort of thing which voters want.
I don’t know whether Modi handled the post-Godhra situation in the best possible way, but the fact that the cycle of violence ended that same year (Modi stepped in to prevent the Akshardam terrorist atrocity from sparking communal strife by simply putting all the blame on the Pakistani ISI) is a tribute to his toughness and understanding of the real issues which voters worry about.
Modi isn’t good at communal politics. He is ham-handed. He denies tickets to Hindu party men and gives them to Muslims in a corporation election with the result that his party loses on their own home ground. If some Muslims are now voting for him it is on economic or other grounds not because they are Muslims. Modi’s brand of politics is fine if the only thing voters worry about is Development, Governance and Poverty Relief.
At one time we believed he could appeal to Hindus on Religious grounds. But to do that is to be sensitive to minute differences in caste, creed and symbology. Some people can do that instinctively. If you go to a Vaishnava temple in the morning then take a darshan from a Saivite sage in the afternoon.
I think it is this quality that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty has. The Congress Gang of 4 consists of a Sikh, a Catholic (Sonia Ji), a Muslim (Ahmed Patel from Gujarat), and a Bengali Hindu (Pranab). There is no suggestion that Kashmiri Dhars are running things behind the scenes (as happened in Indira’s early years) or that it is Dosco old boys (the impression in Rajiv’s first year or two)- which, I suppose, begs the question of who is running things.
Personally, I suspect it might be Billi the Cat because such was its lust for power, it escaped from my lap in 1974 and despite plaintive calls of ‘puss! puss!’ and offers of milk in exchange for doing my Sanskrit homework, ran swiftly down Curzon Road in the general direction of the Seats of Power.
Good luck to you, Billi, is what I say. Illegetimi non carborundum!
Some years ago, I was having dinner at La Porte des Indes with an old classmate of mine whose family hail from Gujarat. Like many Ugandan Asians who settled in England in the early ’70’s, my friend, though, by his own admission, an expert investor in various high value projects mushrooming in the State, displayed a lamentable ignorance of Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s complicity in the anti-Muslim riots of 2002.
Trying to shake him out of his complacency, I mentioned some of the atrocities that had been uncovered by N.G.O’s and Citizen Rights groups which I’d read about in respected National newspapers and, on my visits to India, also seen discussed on the highly rated N.D.T.V channel.
My friend remained skeptical, not to say cynical, about my sources. To speak plainly, he simply couldn’t believe that the incidents I recounted- all too gory to be set down here- had really happened- especially as he had been visiting his ancestral town, in Saurashtra, at the time and witnessed nothing untoward. I explained that I too had been unaware of the terrible atrocities being committed against the Sikhs in 1984, though I was living in New Delhi.
Heedless of my arguments, he dismissed me as a credulous fool- duped by the Leftists in the Media.
Quite naturally, I took umbrage, and, heated words having been exchanged, our relationship cooled, so much so that I no longer felt able, in India that winter, to take advantage of his generous offer to let his own broker manage my portfolio there.
Sometime later, he contacted me in a much mollified mood- I think it was the Visa ban on Modi that finally convinced him that, perhaps, Modi had a case to answer- thus conceding that it was he rather than I who had ‘swallowed the party line’. By way of reparation, he arranged an interview for me with the Chief Minister.
Since I am not a journalist but a poet (that too of a cerebral, hermetic type) it crossed my mind that the intention was to pull the wool over my eyes and get me to put my name to what would in effect be a whitewash.
For this reason, though I did conduct an interview- I made it clear that I would publish nothing in the way of exculpation, but, rather, give the Chief Minister a chance to make a clean breast of things.
Modiji, whatever else you might say about him, is an astute judge of men. I say this because, firstly, he very courteously chose to speak to me in English rather than Hindi- thus appearing to cede me the ‘home court’ advantage and deflect any ‘anti Hindi’ animosity I- self-evidently Tamil in accent and complexion- might subconsciously subscribe to.
Secondly, he harped on his humble background and the fact that far from profiting from his office, he hadn’t even been able to build a house for himself.
I am aware that people might make the same criticism of Mahatma Gandhi. I suppose there was an element of showmanship in the ‘half naked fakir’, accompanied by his milch goat and spinning wheel, mounting the stairs of Buckingham Palace for an audience with the King Emperor. However, Gandhiji’s showmanship had a basis in reality. Modi, on the other hand, was simply ‘milking it’ by presenting himself as an illegal immigrant (because of the Visa ban) smuggled into the U.K on a refrigerated lorry and now having to work at less than minimum wage in a Bangladeshi restaurant. Most galling of all, for a member of the R.S.S, was that he was obliged to use a Muslim name- Abdul Haq- and cook meat and serve alcohol.
There was a sort of poetic Justice to his predicament and I’d have been quite justified to let the fellow rot there in that second rate Curry house- but there is a softer side to us old L.S.E alumni and so, sternly admonishing him not to repeat that Godhra thing, I did advance him the balance he needed to buy an air ticket home, in return for one trifling favor.
You see, as a Hindu poet, I have always wanted to recite my sonnet on the Somnath temple within the sacred precinct itself. Modi hummed and hawed but, prodded by my friend, finally gave in. He made one stipulation which showed the theatrical flair and genius for choreographing public spectacle he shared with Adolf Hitler. His notion was that I should costume myself as Mahmud of Ghazni- the Eleventh Century Afghan warlord- and rush upon the holy temple, declaring my intention to raze it to the ground before proceeding to deal similarly with the Narmada dam.
Modi explained that people would be incensed and a large crowd soon assemble. However, before anything untoward could occur, by a prearranged signal, the Purohits of the Temple would issue forth to plead with me to spare the Holy fane. Meanwhile, representatives of the Media would have had a chance to rush to the spot. Once the T.V cameras were properly set up and boom mikes extended, the time would be ripe to throw off my disguise and recite my sublime composition.
I agreed to Modiji’s stipulation, not from any desire to bask in the limelight, but because it pointed a way to symbolically heal a thousand year old wound and restore brotherly feeling between Hindus and Muslims not just in Gujarat but throughout India.
The Chief Minister heartily endorsed my sentiment before scuttling back to his waiterly tasks of clearing tables and sweeping up poppadom pieces.
My friend, who had some private business with Modiji- returning from the toilet, I’d glimpsed the Chief Minister slipping him the greater part of the money I’d handed over for the air ticket- was firmly of the opinion that my Somnath poem had already attained that proverbial ‘sublimity beyond self-sodomy’ (appan ki khud gaand marne se zor intikhabiyat) and urged me to make my pilgrimage without delay.
However, I am a perfectionist. In the intervening years, my poem on Somnath has both expanded both in scope and sphincteral venturesomeness of style. I think my magnum opus is virtually complete. Soon, I shall set off for Gujarat. The one thing about Modi everybody agrees on is that he always keeps his word. There is no red tape. All I need to do is tip off my friend and then, like a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky, appear suddenly at Somnath changing, not literary history merely, but also political history, nay! say rather the history of Spirituality! Man’s Destiny on Earth! and, be it but in that moment only, the very destiny of Time…
The moral of this story, for my young readers, is that though you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the newspapers, still where reportage is based on responsible N.G.O and Academic sources, then great benefits may flow from keeping oneself properly informed.
Jai Hind!
Meta-metaphoricity 