By Justice Markandey Katju
All the information which is coming from the social media is that Prime Minister Modis's days are numbered, and he will have lost heavily when the ongoing Indian parliamentary election results are declared on 4th June.
During his 10 year rule Modi did great damage to India. He created havoc, polarising society on religious lines, and inciting hatred against Muslims, to get Hindu votes. He was a skilled dramatist, organising Yoga Day, Swatchata Abhiyan ( Cleanliness Drive ), and what not. He gave the slogan '' Sabka saath sabka vikaas '' ( progress for all ) when what he really always intended was putting 'ghuspethia' ( infiltrator ) Muslims in their place ( an expression he used in a public speech recently, and which indicates he believes in M.S. Golwalkar's view in his book 'A Bunch of Thoughts' that Muslims are not Indians at all but foreigners ).
He won the 2019 parliamentary elections by the Balakot air strike on Pakistan, and declaring ''Humne unke ghar mein ghus ke maara hai '' ( we beat Pakistanis entering their home ), which created an emotional upsurge in favour of BJP. He tried the same stunt by consecrating the Ram mandir in Ayodhya in January this year, thinking this will create a pro-Modi wave which will sweep the 2024 elections. But alas, public memory is short, and people have forgotten the Ram Mandir as they face real issus like record unemployment, skyrocketing prices of food, fuel and other essential commodities, appalling level of child malnourishment ( every second child in in India is malnourished ), etc. There is no Modi wave in the present elections.
Modi reminds one of the Roman god Janus, who had two heads, one looking forward, and the other looking backward. Modi's forward loking head spoke of digital India, a 5 trillion dollar Indian economy, sending an Indian rocket to the moon, etc etc.
The other head looked towards ancient India, which, according to him knew head transplant surgery, genetic engineering, used aeroplanes, etc ( which the RSS, to which he belongs, believes in.)
But in fact Modi had always had only one head, the one looking backward, while the forward looking head was really not a head at all but a mask.
After he became Chief Minister of Gujarat state in 2002 there was a massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in which he was definitely complicit, as this fitted in with his RSS ideology. This has been explained in the article below.
And ever since he became Prime Minister in 2014 religious polarisation and communal hatred has increased exponentially in India, with numerous atrocities particularly against the Muslim minority in India. There have been numerous lynchings of Muslims by cow vigilantes for allegedly selling/eating beef, beating of Muslims for not saying ‘Jai Shri Ram’, bulldozing their houses, and other atrocities and discrimination against them.
State institutions and many educational institutions were ‘saffronised’, and history and science perverted during his tenure as PM ( as was done by the Nazis in Germany ).
The intellect and reactionary thinking of Modi can be gauged by his claim that there were head transplants, genetic engineering, stem cell technology, aeroplanes etc in ancient India
Taking his cue, BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur claimed that cow urine can cure cancer, and Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Dev claimed that ancient Indians had invented the internet. At the 106th Indian Science Congress in 2019, G. Nageshwar Rao, Vice Chancellor of Andhra University and Professor of Chemistry, claimed that ancient Hindus pioneered stem cell research, since 100 Kauravas were born of one mother because of knowledge of stem cell and test tube technology, that Vishnu used guided missiles, and that the King of Lanka, Ravana, had 24 kinds of aircraft. In the 105th Indian Science Congress in 2018 Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan claimed that the Hindu Vedas were superior to Einstein’s Theory of Gravity.
Not to be left behind Union Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal said that science was a dwarf compared to astrology
All this reminds us of the Nazi perversion of science by their racial theory, when a coterie of Nazi-affiliated physicists promoted the idea of a “German” or “Aryan” physics, opposed to a supposedly “Jewish” influence in the relativity and quantum theories.
Similarly, Modi’s government tried to pervert history, e.g. by branding Mughal era as foreign rule and slavery just because the Mughals were Muslims, when the truth is that Indians ( including Hindus ) prospered a lot during Mughal rule and became perhaps the richest country in the world, with over 25% of the word’s wealth. Emperor Akbar, who proclaimed his doctrine of suleh-e-kul ( equal respect and toleration of all religions ), is in my opinion, the real Father of the Indian Nation
A lot of claims have been made that during Modi’s rule the Indian economy and India's GDP has grown a lot. Such claims are laughable, as explained in these articles.
Moreover, even assuming there was GDP growth, the question to be asked is who has got the fruits of such growth, a handful of big businessmen, or the Indian masses? Under Modi’s rule, a few Indian billionaires have become richer, while the poor have become poorer
Three facts are enough to demonstrate what calamity has been caused by Modi’s rule.
(1) Child malnutrition has increased, every second Indian child being malnourished, stunted and/or wasted. India, which was at position number 101 of the 125 countries surveyed, has slipped 6 positions in a few years to position number 107, according to Global Hunger Index, an internationally renowned agency studying hunger in the world, its situation becoming worse than neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Srilanka.
(2) Unemployment has reached record heights under Modi's rule. If a single post of chaprasi ( peon ) is advrtised by the government, often there are 25,000 applications, some applicants holding Ph.D. MA, M.Sc. or engineering degrees, all begging for a chaprasi's job.
(3) Prices of even essential commodities like food, fuel and medicines have skyrocketed in India.
Are these signs of economic progress?
Like Gen Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan, Modi made every effort to take India back into the Middle Ages and convert India from a dejure secular to a defacto Hindu state
The BJP came to power under Modi’s leadership in 2014 alleging massive corruption by the Congress. But after coming to power corruption became its cult, and increased exponentially, as the recent electoral bonds scandal disclosed
The BJP has become known as the ‘washing machine’ for corrupt politicians who join it
India has had enough of Mr Modi, and the time has now come for him to go. By bitter experience, the Indian people have seen through his frauds, dramas and empty rhetoric. There is a saying '' You can fool some people all the time, and all the people for some time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time ''. Evidently Modi thought he could fool all Indians all the time.
The present parliamentary election is going to be his Waterloo.
(Justice Katju is a retired judge of the Supreme Court. These are his personal views.)
