The road from Ayodhya airport was lined with cutouts — four of Modi, for every one of the temple town’s presiding deity. For once, public pushback worked and the Modi images were taken down, Print reports. There is a worthy entry for your ‘gratitude journal’, assuming you keep one.
Not that one cutout more or less makes a difference — this past week, the media has been a willing participant in the anointing of Modi as the latest — and greatest — saint in the Hindutva pantheon. Modi goes to the temple — actually, temples, plural; every day a new one, in a different state. Modi sleeps on the ground. Modi only drinks coconut water and that too, one glass in the morning and one at night. No, Modi eats only fruits. And so on. (Apropos, read Samar Halarnkar on Modi’s transformation from chowkidar to divine messenger)
Like the odd Ram image interrupting the parade of Modi cutouts in different costumes, there is the occasional inconvenient news item — of a police station burned down and seven people killed in Manipur in a 48-hour period; of an Agniveer being killed by a mine in Kashmir and two others injured in Kashmir… but look, Modi performs puja in Guruvayur…
I love reading speeches. No, this is not a non sequitur, stay with me. I love reading speeches because there is much you can learn about structure, sentence rhythms, rhetorical devices and just plain storytelling by reading a good speech, which is why I include them in the writing workshops I occasionally do). A starred item in my ‘speeches’ folder is an anti-war speech by Indiana Congressman Eugene W Debs delivered at Canton, Ohio, on 16 June 1918. Quote:
“in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both, to deceive and overawe the people.”
Eugene W Debs, Canton, Ohio
In passing, read this Indian Express story of how the Centre has withheld Rs 7000 crore funds due to West Bengal because the ration shops there don’t showcase flexes with Modi’s photo.
Ad of the week:
Friends tell me of their gated communities distributing akshata, and diyas to be lit on January 22; of saffron scarf-wearing groups handing out plastic replicas of the Ram temple to be installed in individual homes and prayed to on the day; in Karnataka the private schools association “advises” that instead of declaring a holiday, school children should attend school so they can watch the Ayodhya inaugural being screened live (Remember this is the state where not so long ago, the then state government passed a law banning the wearing of hijab within school premises because, religious symbolism…)…
All of the above, and more, pales before this initiative by PVR Inox — which in synergistic collaboration with media house Aaj Tak will screen the temple inauguration on the big screen:
PSA: Popcorn is free.
Quote of the week:
That is atmanirbhar for you. You light the lamp. You get inspired. You remove poverty from your life. Meanwhile, Modi: Pass me the tender coconut water.
And now to the story of the week, which should ideally be headlined thus:
Muslim teen gets bail for not spitting on procession
The story in brief: Earlier this year, there was a religious procession in Ujjain. As per usual, it featured provocative slogans. In its wake, hindutva outfits complained that Muslims had spit on the procession. Eyewitnesses gave statements to that effect. The police said there was a video of the incident. An 18-year-old was arrested along with two others. The police and the local administration demolished their homes to the accompaniment of the drumbeats — literally — of the lumpen rejoicing in their triumph.
Hearing the case after the accused had spent more than five months in jail, the Madhya Pradesh high court found procedural lapses in the police case; the so-called eyewitness said he had not only not seen the accused doing what he was supposed to have done, he had in fact seen no one spitting on the procession.
Under cross-examination, the complainant Sawant Lot, based on whose testimony the three had been arrested, said it was only when he was taken to the police station by officers that he “got to know that someone had spit” on the procession.
“I did not see anyone spitting,” he told the court. “There were a lot of policemen and I was told to sign some papers. The policemen did not tell me why my signatures were taken.”
The court granted bail. BJP spokesperson Alok Vats, appearing on a TV debate, said maybe bulldozing the teens house was a “mistake done in haste”.
‘Hum Ram nahi hai,’ Vats said when asked if bulldozing the house was right or wrong.
From the archives:
The term ‘edifice complex’ — a play on ‘Oedipus complex’ — was coined in the 1970s and applied to Imelda Marcos, First Lady of the Philippines, to describe her tendency to use public funds to build projects aimed at election propaganda.
The building of grandiose structures to showcase political power was not limited to Imelda Marcos. Deyan Sudjic in his book The Edifice Complex: The Architecture of Power chronicles instances ranging from Hitler and Stalin to Saddam Hussein and Trump and everyone in between.
Architecture feeds the egos of the susceptible. They grow more and more dependent on it to the point where architecture becomes an end to itself, seducing the addicts as they build more and more on an even larger scale.
Building is the means by which the egotism of the individual is expressed in its most naked form: the Edifice Complex.
Deyan Sudjic in the book The Edifice Complex
I once came across a video clip of Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, recounting a meeting with Manmohan Singh. Maine unse kaha ki yeh GDP-VDP sab chodo ji — aap kuch bada karne ka socho. And while on that:
Image courtesy Businessline
I was reminded of all this while reading the news that the seaplane service has been discontinued. The Gujarat government told the Assembly this week that it has spent Rs 13.5 crore on the project, and was forced to terminate it on finding that the operational costs were too exorbitant.
It was Modi, who was then experimenting with a faux Tagore look, who had launched it by taking the first flight —which, as usual, was a “first of its kind”. The event was timed to coincide with the Ekta Diwas celebrations at the Statue of Unity, on Sardar Patel’s 145th birth anniversary.
It turned out that there were various issues with the SpiceJet-operated flight (which, by the way, includes the fact that craft and crew both belonged to a foreign entity, to wit, wait for this, Maldives). A feasibility test had been conducted by the government before embarking on the project — but when, a couple of months after launch the service began to run into difficulties, the Airports Authority of India in response to an RTI refused to share the results of the feasibility tests, and also refused to disclose the expenses incurred by the government.
The reasons cited for not sharing information included that revealing such information would directly impact “commercial confidence in the state” — another way of saying that letting you know what was spent will tell you how big of a bunch of idiots the people running the state and the country are.
This was not by any means the only Tughlaqian scheme of Modi’s that had to be walked back after the expense of enormous sums of money. Remember the Ro-Ro (roll on roll off) service Modi inaugurated in late October 2017? (The Gujarat Assembly elections were held in early December of that year.) Remember the gush in the media? NDTV had ten points on the ‘invaluable gift to India’. One of them was Modi’s ‘new mantra’ P-forP which, we are told, stood for Ports-for-Prosperity. Times of India has top facts — with the words ‘world class’ punctuating the listicle.
In another article, the Times quoted Modi saying this was his dream project, and “No one can imagine how I feel when my childhood dream has come true.” (Modi must have been a rare sort of child — others dream of playing cricket for India or flying planes, he dreamt of creating a Ro-Ro service. Then again, we know he was a rare child — they even made a movie, Chalo Jeete Hain, to show just how rare. Here, watch.)
Now for the sequel: Island Jade, the ferry Modi rode on to launch the service, was put up for sale in January 2020. The service itself had been suspended three months prior since there wasn’t enough draft to run the vessel. (By the way, if you find yourself in Cochin, try the Ro-Ro service there — it was running long before Modi’s ‘I had a dream’ moment, and it continues to operate long after the Island Jade was interred.)
The Times piece linked above had, in passing, the inconvenient fact that the project cost had doubled and, when Modi inaugurated it, the tariff stood at Rs 615 crore.
A few dozen crore here, a few hundred crore there, it all begins to add up.
And that is it for now, folks. Have a good Sunday, and don’t forget to book your Inox tickets for the Ayodhya inaugural — free popcorn, remember?
Smoke Signals 