Mainstream Weekly

Mainstream, VOL LI, No 51, December 7, 2013

An Idiot for PM?: (Non-)Sense of History in

NaMo
Saturday 7 December 2013, by Subhash Gatade

Though this be madness yet there is method in it Hamlet, Shakespeare

The 2014 elections arent merely about changing the government. The rhetoric
ahead of the polls makes one believe that its an attempt at once to change
historical narratives handed down to successive generation of Indians. And the
man in the forefront of it all is the BJPs prime ministerial candidate Narendra
Modi.

(http://blogs.hindustantimes.com/separated-at-birth/2013/11/11/debating-history-berating-
history/ [http://blogs.hindustantimes.com/separated-at-birth/2013/11/11/debating-history-
berating-history/])

Wordsmiths of the world need to put in their heads or pull up their socks (you may say) to coin a
new word which can rather resonate with what goes on in this part of South Asia in the name of
political speeches. Should one call it polifiction or politainment or some similar word?

Perhaps a word exists and this poor pen-pusher is ignorant about it.

Anyway, the matter has become a bit urgent with the feverish preparations which are going on
here for the battle royale which would take place in the year 2014 and the not-so-silent
emergence of NaMo on the national scene and the daily dose of half-truths, fiction and complete
distortion which goes under the name of oratory.

His recent speech in Gujarat which he deli-vered while inaugurating a hospital could be
considered the pinnacle of his polifiction. In the said speech he claimed that Shyama Prasad
Mookherjee, was a great son of Gujarat and had built the India House in London He also
claimed that this great son of Gujarat was in regular dialogue with Vivekananda and Dayanand
Saraswati and in his usual penchant for taking credits it was his good fortune to be able to bring
back the ashthi (ashes) of Mukherjee from Geneva in 2003.
Any layperson who has brief acquaintance with history or has not spent her/his formative years
in one of those Parivar-run schools, would share that Mukherjee was born in 1902 in the then
undivided Bengal, worked with Hindu Mahasabha for quite some time, was part of Nehrus first
Cabinet, helped found Jana Sangha a mass politival platform for the RSSand died in the
50s. Perhaps anyone can marvel at the ability of a one-year-old Mookherjee to be in dialogue
with Swami Vivekanandawho died in 1903 and would also be keen to know the method
adopted by him to have a dialogue with Dayanand Saraswati who had died more than 25 years
before his birth.

The fact of the matter is that it was not Mukherjee but Shyamji Krishna Varma from Kutchh
Mandvi (born October 4, 1857), Gujarat, an Indian revolutionary, lawyer, journalist, who had
gone to London, developed the India House (1902) which later became the living space for many
Indian freedom fighters, started an English monthly, The Indian Sociologist, an organ of
political, social and religious reform. History books tell us that Shyamji had died in Geneva in
1930.

Supporters of NaMo can claim that the said speechwhich showed his complete ignorance
about the important milestone in the trajectory of his own organisation, the formation of the
Bhartiya Jana Sangh, the first mass political platform launched by RSS itself,was just a slip of
tongue and not much should be read into it. If that is the case, then how should one interpret his
utterly false claim that Nehru did not even attend Patels funeraldespite proof to the contrary
or what is the explanation for his pearls of wisdom at Patna rally wherein he is reported to have
said that Alexander had come to Bihar and was defeated by Biharisdespite the obvious fact
that Alexander never crossed the Gangesor placing Taxila in Bihar although it is in Pakistan or
saying that Chandragupta Maurya, the legendary King, belonged to the Gupta dynasty?

What one is concerned here is not just a slip of tongue here and therewhich can happen with
anyone but the fact that it is a new genre of speech which is on the one hand (according to
observers) entertaining and captivating but if one digs further one finds it is built on sheer
fiction, to say the least. And there is no spontaneity involved here leading to slip of tongue,
everything is deliberate, presented before the masses in a packaged form for wider consumption
to serve the larger agenda based on exclusion and hate.

It would not be off the mark if one says that NaMo has slowly metamorphosed into P.N. Oak of
Indian politics. It need be mentioned here that P.N. Oak was a very popular historian in
Hindutva circles who claimed that that Christianity and Islam are both derivatives of Hinduism,
or that the Catholic Vatican, Kaaba and the Taj Mahal were once Hindu temples to Shiva.

II

Three months before his death Sardar Patel said: Our leader is Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Bapu
appointed him his heir and successor during his lifetime and even declared it. It is the duty of
the soldiers of Bapu that they abide by his orders. One who does not accept this order by heart
would prove a sinner before god. I am not a disloyal soldier. For me it is unimportant what my
place is. I only know that I am that very place where Bapu asked me to stand.
(Translated from original hindi, Purnahuti, Chaturth Khand, Page 465, Pyarelal, Navjeevan
Prakashan, Ahmedabad) This he stated at Indore on October 2, 1950.

An important characteristics of these Modi-speaks is that in his hurry to belittle the Congress or
stigmatise his adversaries, Modi has done a grave injustice to Patels persona and abused history
to no end. In fact it would be better to put it this way that NaMo has carved out a Patel which
suits his politics but is unrecognisable to anyone outside the Parivar. Sardar Patel is no more a
symbol of pride for the Gujaratis. Today, Modi has reduced him to a symbol of victimhood of
Nehru dynasty and an unfulfilled desire. (http://www.truthof-gujarat.com/vicitimisation-
sardar-vallabhbhai-patel [http://www.truthof-gujarat.com/vicitimisation-sardar-
vallabhbhai-patel])

On the one hand he euologises Patel, claims that Indias future would have been different if he
would have become the first PM of India, tries to create a false adversarial relation between him
and Nehru and simultaneously in the same breath abuses him. Perhaps if wiser sense would
have prevailed he would not have held the Congress responsible for partition or for being
instrumental in changing the history and geography of the subcontinent knowing fully well that
Patel was part of the triumvirate apart from Gandhi and Nehru, which played a key role before
and after partition.

Perhaps it would be opportune to read Sardar Patel himself in a book titled the Nehru
Abhinandan GranthA birthday book released in 1949 to mark the diamond jubilee birth
celebrations of Pt Nehru, recognising Pt Nehrus credentials as the idol of the nation, hero of the
masses and leader of the people and also addressing Nehru as a person who is willing to seek
and ready to take any advice, contrary to the impressions created by some interested persons.

Jawaharlal and I have been fellow members of the Congress, soldiers in the struggle for
freedom,..This familiarity, nearness, intimacy and brotherly affection make it difficult for me to
sum up for public appreciation, but then, the idol of the masses, 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.

...As one older in years it has been my privilege to tender advice to him on the manifold
problems which we have been faced in both administrative and organisational fields. I have
found him willing to seek and ready to take it. Contrary to the impressions created by some
interested persons and eagerly accepted in credulous circles, we have worked together as lifelong
friends and colleagues, adjusting ourselves to each others point of view as the occasion
demanded and valuing each others advice as only those who have confidence in each other can.

He further writes: in the fitness of things that in the twilight preceding the dawn of
independence, he 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 two years of our difficult existence. I have seen him age quickly during
that period on account of the worries of the high office that he holds and the tremendous
reponsibilities that he wields.

Of course, Modi cannot be held solely responsible for denigrating our own heroes. For someone
who has been a Swayamsevak since his teens, where you are fed with all sorts of P.N. Oakisms
as part of the Baudhik training can you expect something better? In fact, anyone conversant
with the Sangh history can vouch that there is nothing new as far as abusing our own heroes is
concerned if it helps present a sanitised image of the RSS. As an aside one can look at how the
RSS had no qualms in denigrating Savarkar himself to prove its innocence in the assassination
of Mahatma Gandhi.

The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic and the alleged role
played by the RSS in it is still debated. Few years back when some fresh facts emerged to
buttress the case, a RSS had issued a press statement denying any culpability in this killing and
in the process itself maligned Savarkara key ideologue of the project of Hindutva.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has today denied that it had anything to do with the
assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and as a proof of its innocence circulated a copy of a letter
written by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to Jawaharlal Nehru just 28 days after the murder.
However, it seems that the RSS overlooked the fact that the same letter blamed V.D. Savarkar
for hatching the conspiracy and seeing it through while emphasising that the assassi-nation
was welcomed by those of the RSS and the [Hindu] Mahasabha.

(RSS releases proof of its innocence, by Neena Vyas, August 17, 2004,
http://www.hindu.com/2004/08/18/stories/2004081805151100.htm
[http://www.hindu.com/2004/08/18/stories/2004081805151100.htm])

III

That day Delhi had caught Punjabs infection. I will not tolerate Delhi becoming another
Lahore, Vallabhbhai declared in Nehrus and Mount-battens presence. He publicly threatened
partisan officials with punishment, and at his instructions orders to shoot rioters at sight were
issued on September 7. Four Hindu rioters were shot dead at the railway station in Old Delhi.

(Patel: A Life, Rajmohan Gandhi, Navjeevan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, p. 428)

Whatever might be the claims of his cheerleaderswho felt happy when NaMo talked of Hindus
and Muslims uniting together to fight poverty or Pahle Shauchalay aur Phir Devalay (Toilets
first, Temples later)the core of his divisive, prejudice-deepening politics is not going to go
away easily. It would be too much to expect that one fine morning NaMo would be able to
undertake a Kafkasquean metamorphosis and do away with what his biographer Nilanjan
Mukhopadhyay calls myopic view of history, an exaggerated notion in his abilities and disdain
for the viewpoint of the other.
For someone who is in a hurry to reach the topmost post in the countryany sort of unlearning
seems impossible

A beginning can only be made if he tenders an unconditional apology to the carnage in Gujarat
in 2002 and opens himself to a legal scrutiny for his alleged acts of omission and commission
during that tumultuous period.

ISSN : 0542-1462 / RNI No. : 7064/62