Politicians aren’t stars of the stage and screen, meant to drag people’s attention away from the grim realities of their miserable existence and offer fleeting entertainment. A leader who can’t identify the real issues and solve them one by one is unfit for public life. Political discourse, despite elements of hypocrisy and deceit, has to revolve around the real concerns of the masses.

Let’s examine what Prime Minister Narendra Modi is talking about in election-bound Bihar. 

Here’s what he said at a public meeting in Chhapra on October 30:

“Congress leaders of Punjab and Telangana insulted the people of Bihar; the Congress invited the chief minister of Tamil Nadu to Patna to harm the RJD’s (Rashtriya Janata Dal’s) prospects; the income of rickshaw-pullers and shopkeepers had increased as the number of devotees swelled after the construction of the Kashi Vishwanath corridor in Uttar Pradesh, and the same is being done in Bihar with Hariharnath corridor and Ganga riverbed beautification; the Ganga Vilas Cruise from Varanasi to Bengal passes through Bihar, showcasing its cultural heritage; Rahul Gandhi has the time to tour foreign countries but won’t go to the Ram temple in Ayodhya…”

Bihar, crying for avenues of livelihood, must have erupted in joy. There was more for the people to digest. Modi continued:

“Lakhs of people visited Ram temple but the Congress and RJD do not have any respect for faith. Their leaders fear their vote-bank will get angry; ghuspaithiya sar pe chadh jayenge (the infiltrators will sit on your heads).”

Let this sink in, the prime minister wants Indians to believe Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav have not visited the Ram temple in Ayodhya because that would upset infiltrators. If this was not enough, Modi made the blatantly false accusation that Rahul Gandhi had insulted “Chhathi Maiya”, twisting a comment the leader of opposition had made about him and presenting it as disrespect of the goddess.

But this is not the first time Modi has twisted facts to suit his politics. In the last Karnataka election, he equated criticism of the Bajrang Dal with insult of Lord Hanuman. In the 2017 Gujarat election, he falsely accused former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Vice President Hamid Ansari and a former army chief of plotting against him in connivance with Pakistan. Shouldn’t Modi worry about his credibility? 

Fake heroism

Truth is empowering. But false pretences induce serious personality disorders. When Rahul Gandhi challenged Modi to confront US President Donald Trump, who has been repeatedly claiming that his decisive intervention forced the ceasefire between India and Pakistan, the prime minister might have come under pressure to show he was indeed courageous.

Reluctant to wrestle with Trump, Modi invented ingenious ways to advertise his valour. After all, how could he allow his 56-inch claim to be dismissed as bogus? Rahul’s ‘Modi-Darpok-Hai’ chant had to be drowned. So, enemies were conjured and vanquished.

Modi narrated how naxals and urban naxals had been cornered; he vowed to throw out every single ghuspaithiya (infiltrator); he boasted how Pakistan had discovered that “Naya Bharat ghar mein ghus kar maarta hai (New India hunts the enemy down in its own territory)”. He then swiftly moved to his pet aversion – the Congress.

As the occasion was Sardar Patel’s birth anniversary, he reignited the old grudge, that the great patriot was ill-treated by the Nehru-Gandhi family. To refurbish his credentials as a strong leader, Modi explained how he had set up the war memorial and how symbols of colonial rule were wiped out with the sanitisation of the Navy flag and renaming of Rajpath as Kartavyapath.       

But the question remains unanswered: Why is Modi silent on Trump’s insults? “Come to Bihar and muster the courage to say Trump is lying. Indira Gandhi showed the Americans in 1971 she wasn’t scared,” Rahul’s words reverberated in the air.

Modi’s vague claim that the Congress didn’t take India’s sovereignty seriously after Patel’s demise also failed to convince people. While Jawaharlal Nehru went to war with China on the question of sovereignty despite India being a nascent state, Indira sliced Bangladesh out of Pakistan in defiance of the American threat. Modi ironically didn’t even name China in the aftermath of the Ladakh intrusion. 

Unity and divisiveness

Unity is not a decorative item only to be paraded on special occasions. Modi attended a grand show at Kewadiya in Gujarat where Sardar’s 150th birth anniversary was celebrated. At the Ekta Parade, Modi called for a “unity pledge”, underlining that a united society was needed for a nation’s growth and security. “Every conspiracy to disrupt unity has to be demolished,” he thundered.

Being the omnipotent prime minister, he must know who have been the agents and catalysts of divisiveness in the last decade. He is the best person to tell the nation about the attempts to forge social and cultural solidarities across the nation.

Does Modi remember his own contribution to this noble cause? If he can vividly recall the real and false differences between Nehru and Patel, he would certainly remember the language he spoke in 2002 and in almost every election after 2014, contributing to the noble cause of national unity.

Does he realise that Indian polity was never so fractured as it is today; political parties do not even have systemic engagements, let alone social and cultural relations, after his arrival in national politics 11 years ago? Even on October 31, when his government celebrated Patel’s birth anniversary, wasn’t India Gandhi slighted, ignoring the fact that she sacrificed her life for the country?

Nehru and Patel

Is it not possible for the prime minister to avoid creating false rifts between Nehru and Patel? At Sardar’s 150th anniversary celebrations, when a combination of airplane displays and dog demonstrations was presented in an Ekta Parade, Modi tried yet again to separate Patel from Nehru. He has been citing the Partition, Article 370 and the choice of India’s first prime minister to condemn the Congress, and arguing that Patel would have handled things better than Nehru.       

But Modi’s fulminations negate historical truths. Patel himself wrote:

“I felt that if we did not accept Partition, India would be split into many bits and would be completely ruined”.

Historians and political scientists have written that the Partition was the climax of a long-drawn process in which dealing with Jinnah’s obduracy and communal violence had become impossible. Jammu and Kashmir was the only state that negotiated its terms of association with India on the basis of a commitment manifested through Article 370.

Article 370 was finalised after protracted negotiations between Kashmir, led by Sheikh Abdullah, and New Delhi. With Patel as home minister piloting the negotiations and the Constituent Assembly approving the draft, historians and political scientists believe Nehru alone cannot be singled out for blame.

The RSS-BJP has woven false narratives on the two leaders’ personal relationship as well. But Patel himself wrote about Nehru:

“Having known each other in such intimate and varied fields of activity we have naturally grown fond of each other, our mutual affection has increased as years have advanced, and it is difficult for people to imagine how much we miss each other when we are apart and unable to take counsel together in order to resolve our problems and difficulties. This familiarity, nearness, intimacy and brotherly affection make it difficult for me to sum him up for public appreciation, but, then, the idol of the nation, the leader of the people, the Prime Minister of the country, and the hero of the masses, whose noble record and great achievements are an open book, hardly needs any commendation from me.”

 Patel added:

“It was, therefore, in the fitness of things that in the twilight preceding the dawn of Independence he (Nehru) should have been our leading light, and that when India was faced with crisis after crisis, following the achievement of our freedom, he should have been the upholder of our faith and the leader of our legions. No one knows better than myself how much he has laboured for his country in the last years of our difficult existence.”

Referring to the perceived differences between the two, Patel wrote:

“On the contrary to the impression created by some interested persons and eagerly accepted in credulous circles, we have worked together as lifelong friends and colleagues, adjusting ourselves to each other’s point of view as the occasion demanded, and valuing each other’s advice as only those who have confidence in each other can.”

Unfortunately for the nation, that “interested person” today is the prime minister himself.

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