A large number of urban Hindus live in a bubble, disconnected from their roots and the hard realities of life in Bharat’s hinterland and the not-so-posh areas of the cities they live in. The relentless bombarding & selective reporting by our English-language mainstream media has created many false perceptions among urbanites, even intelligent ones who may otherwise excel in their chosen domains.
Most Hindus also suffer from the hangover of a colonial consciousness which was drilled into us by the brutal British Raj. The education and social structures created by the colonials, which were blindly carried forward by the Nehruvian state, have taught us to hate our own way of life and regard Western ‘isms’ (materialism, secularism, liberalism, communism, monotheism etc.) as the only way forward.
But truth, as they say, has a way of emerging. The current Wuhan virus pandemic has opened many eyes as to who really stands with the nation at a time of crisis. The calm & responsive handling of the situation by the Modi government, the massive relief work carried out by Hindu organizations, and the usual negativity and agenda-peddling of our left-liberal-secular cabal is hard to miss, even for someone who takes every word of The Hindu or NDTV as the absolute truth.
Each Hindu has to traverse his/her personal journey to rediscover the civilizational consciousness which defines Hindus and Bharat. This cultural renaissance will involve argument, debate and maybe even heated exchange of views. Below, we reproduce a Facebook post by one Natashja Rathore posted on 29th March. Despite still harbouring many false notions about “bhakts , trolls & secularism”, many of the points she makes are valid and should resonate with those urban Hindus who are as yet clueless about the left-liberal-secular agenda.
The following is an extremely political and possibly politically incorrect piece. I have never really expressed my political views. However, this time, it is a matter of life and death and I think this is of critical importance.
A crises involving life and death, is the best time to judge a person’s intention, for it is at this time that our true nature is revealed.
My findings have been that while large amounts of Indians are brainless trolls, goons and ‘bhakts’ with an excuse to push their religious or extremists ideas, a large part of the “intellectual” and “woke” community are no better with their mindless and blind hatred for Modi. How do you navigate through extreme ideologies at both ends? How do you make sense of the truth?
Gene Sharp is an American Political Scientist who has written several books on how to demolish a government. He has come up with 198 methods on how to bring down a government through non-violent and democratic ways. The movement should talk about peace and democracy but render the government non functional to a point that it paralyses the machinery. In the end, the systems that add strength to the government will become ineffective and collapse.
Some of these methods have been implemented at Tahrir Square in Egypt. The same thing happened in Ukraine against Russia. In Hong Kong its implementation for 76 Days created a havoc!
Some of these methods include throwing stones at the police and our own security forces, destroying their pathways, blocking the roads, setting fire to fire engines (what’s used to extinguish fire- burn it first so that everything else burns), placing women and children on the front lines of a protest, acid packets, molotov cocktails (petrol bombs), using the media to run negative campaigns, spread fake news, mislead people and turn our own people against the government.
When you put this in the context of what is happening in Delhi in the garb of religious riots, it appears as if these are strategic methods to diffuse the government. Well thought through and premeditated by intelligent, educated, well read and well informed people. Whatever has happened in Delhi is a direct reflection of at least 70-80 of the methods Gene Sharp has listed.
CAA has nothing to do with this. This has nothing to do with Muslims.
We need to understand that with the size and population of this nation, secularism isn’t even up for question. India has survived the French, Portuguese, British, Mughals and our secular fabric has remain unscarred. What are a couple of Hindutva goons? What is more worrying is that this nation has been looted and has been kept a third world country for decades on end. It has thrived for decades on corruption and dynasty politics. What is more worrying is intelligent, well read and educated people are buying into misinformation and are being politically swayed.
While I do agree that having the BJP in power has given a boost and sort of twisted entitlement to some religious goons and trolls with vested agendas, the political game that is being played to bring down Modi is even more dangerous to the democratic and secular fabric of this nation. It is way more dangerous than some religious goons and idiots.
Anybody who knows anything at all about leadership would know that the first rule of being a leader is that you carry your team with you, no matter how irresponsible or incompetent they are, because that is team work. Anyone who knows anything about being a good team player knows that no matter what your internal issues are, you do not expose your team member for his/ her mistakes, you plug the gap and move on.
But why would anyone hate Modi so much?
India has survived for decades on corruption and dynasty politics. To illustrate an example from my personal life, my dad moved to Mumbai in 1998 to start his career as a gastroenterologist. He was the pioneer of endoscopic ultrasound in India. He has made his way up from earning Rs. 12,000 a month to owning and running his own dedicated Gastroenterology Hospital in the heart of Mumbai city.
But the journey hasn’t been an easy one. Over the years, he has been professionally ostracised, the whole fraternity has turned against him and he has faced death threats and violence. There was an instance where goons were sent to beat up his assistant. Why? Because he was better than the rest? No. It was because he refused to give into corruption and cut practice at the cost of the patient.
This is human nature. We do not like to see anyone or anything succeed, especially, if that someone belongs to a small town or lower socioeconomic strata.
The thing with India is that we have never had a leader who represents 90% of India’s population, we have never had a leader who is a ‘Chaiwala’, who comes from that socio-economic strata, who understands the general India’s public.
Modi understands that for any change in India, we need movements, not laws. A lot of what Modi has implemented in the country, the speed with which things have changed, the way that he has dealt with situations and people is commendable. The only tangible thing that maybe one can poke a hole in right now, is the economy at this point but drastic measures have been taken and only time will tell if these are truly effective or not. In fact, my financial adviser has said that if there is any economy that will pick up faster post COVID, it’s the India’s economy because it’s 90% self sufficient.
I received a Gujarati audio clip from Dr. Sharad Thaker, an MBBS, MD Doctor and Author in which is talking about a recent pre-COVID conversation he had with Modi. He asked him “What’s up these days?” and he says anyone’s normal response would have been “I am fine”. Modi took a moment and with sincerity and seriousness and responded “Sadhana“.
So he asked him “What kind of Sadhana?” to which Modi responded “Sadhana to gain control over sleep, to reduce the amount that I sleep.”
He was astounded because he knows for a fact that Modi sleeps only 3-4 hours a day. So he asked him “I have heard you already sleep very little. How much more do you want to reduce the hours that you sleep?” Modi responded in all seriousness “I don’t want to sleep at all.”
People might find this unbelievable but he says “I understand this because I practice sadhana myself and it is possible to gain control over sleep through sadhana. Legend tells us that Hanuman never slept.”
They spoke a lot after that and he asked him another question “But why do you want to do this. What for?” Modi said, “For this nation and the poverty. It’s a great nation but we’ve been looted and I need to fix it. 20 hours is too little. I need all 24 hours.” While saying this, Modi had tears in his eyes and while listening to this, Dr. Sharad had tears in his eyes.
They then spoke about Modi’s days in the Himalayas and the vision he had, he received a message to not become a Sadhu but instead return to serve the country. Dr. Sharad asked him “There are so many people after your life right now. You’re on top of everyone’s hit list. Aren’t you afraid?” Modi said “It’s my life’s purpose is to serve this nation. Till such point my purpose isn’t fulfilled, no one can kill me. And once my purpose is fulfilled, nobody can save me. I’m not afraid of death. I’m here to fulfil my purpose.”
Dr. Sharad says, “I’m not the sort to blindly follow somebody. When we go out to buy a matka, we knock it a few times to check if it’s kaccha or pakka. This isn’t a matka. This is man. Who has been knocked several times. Not by one person but by 1.3 billion people and he still stands strong. He’s not a kaccha matka. He’s not a kaccha man.”
While videos and tweets of violent protests erupting in China’s Hubei Province amidst the lockdown are being pulled down aggressively by the Chinese Government, videos of Migrant Workers gathered in thousands and tweets criticising the Indian government continue to flood the internet in unprecedented numbers. If the government is as fascist as you claim they are, would you even have the freedom to do this? It’s been 6 years by the way, if a fascist government had to happen, if that really was the intention, it would have happened by now.
A friend from America sent me a voice note this morning. He said “Natashja I’ve seen people criticise the government everywhere. But in India, the level people stoop to is a whole other level.”
The negativity on twitter is crazy. These tweets and posts are trending like never before. Nearly 4.5 billion people are on the internet, if you mislead them and create a narrative as if the government is inefficient, your job is half done. Gene Sharp says that there are a few systems that add strength to the government and you need to use media to bring them down.
It’s no wonder that people have now started to target Sadhguru and various other spiritual organisations but you can’t really poke a hole in Jaggi’s logic and action for the most part so people resort to cheap tactics. While armchair activists sit on their twitter accounts spewing hate, Sadhguru is still out there doing some fantastic things, changing world policies.
There are enough and more people out there on twitter who retweet like machines without even reading the post just because they’re biased, some get paid to retweet, some are are just interested in the sensational headline and you know how we humans get when we are operating with a bias like I mentioned in the opening paragraph.
A group of 25 influencers is enough to make a tweet trend on twitter. I have been observing that these people use the evening and night hours to trend the negative tweets. This is when people in the west wake up so that’s the perception and side of the story they get. Well-meaning intellectuals, college students who stay up late, are the easiest targets as nobody wants fascism, nobody wants religious extremism, nobody wants communal wars, nobody wants bloodshed.
It’s day 4 of the lockdown today, India has registered over 1000 cases now. While 4 slum dwellers from 4 different slum clusters in Mumbai have tested positive for COVID, thousands of migrant workers are out on the highway walking back to their Villages, while many others were ferried by DTC buses to the border and abandoned.
India poses a number of problems when trying to tackle COVID primarily because of
- Educated Illiterates,
- Genuine Illiterates,
- Fake WhatsApp News,
- Biased Intellectuals, and
- Evil Politicians .
In his national addresses over the course of the week, the Prime Minister has begged business owners with folded hands to continue paying their employees and take care of their employees amidst these trying times. Yet, videos are surfacing like the woman whose maid was banned from entering the society. She started screaming “Who the hell is going to pay my maid for 3 weeks? Are you going to pay her? Is the Prime Minister going to pay her? She is fine. There is nothing wrong with her. She will come to work.” Unfortunately, this is the mindset of many Indian employers and as a result, many migrant workers have been removed from their jobs.
The Prime Minister begged with folded hands on National Television “Please maintain social distance. Stay where you are. Do not go back to your villages.” and still we have a sea of humans gathered and stranded at the borders of Delhi and UP. So, what went wrong?
One route we can take here is that the government could have thought of the fallout before declaring a lockdown. They should have anticipated this, knowing the Indian public. Let’s just accept that. But we were running out of time and it was critical to call for a lockdown at that point in time. It was most certainly the right time in the lifecycle of the pandemic, calling it earlier would have left us fatigued and calling it later would have thrown the situation more out of control than it is right now.
Could they have built shelter homes in stadiums to accommodate these migrant workers? Sure, that would have probably been a good idea but after the PM’s address, let’s admit, nobody expected this kind of chaos.
Bearing everything in mind, from the Central Government’s call to lockdown the nation to mobilising medical supplies and equipment at lighting speed to activating economic packages and overall response to the crises seem very well intended. It took China 10 days to build a 1000 bed hospital. India transformed the Indian Railways into a 6370 bed facility overnight. The preparation and planning that has gone into managing this pandemic in a country like India, is unprecedented in the history of the world.
With regards to these migrant workers, many of them have said that they were misinformed through Fake News, WhatsApp and DTC people that the buses are plying and they’ll be able to get on board from Anand Vihar. Again, Gene Sharp 101 – Rumours were spread and Panic was created to bring the situation to where it is right now.
The Central Government has literally done everything in it’s power, considering the size of the nation, the density of the population and the density of brains of the Indian population to curb this pandemic. But unfortunately, it has been clearly displayed, over and over again in Delhi that there are multiple forces at play in the political scenario who would love to watch the Modi Government fail even if it is at the cost of the citizens and the Nation. This is what is sad, what is happening today, is a tragedy for politics in India but above all, it is a tragedy for Humanity.
After everything that Modi has done for the nation in the last 1 week despite the multitude of challenges India has in terms of poor healthcare systems, not enough testing kits, poverty, stubborn-indisciplined-disorganised public, unscientific idiots; after having gone on international platforms like the G20 Summit to knock sense into monstrous leaders of other nations that “Human lives are more important than the economy”
#ModiMadeDisaster is trending on twitter today with people claiming Modi “singlehandedly“ pushed India into stage 3 of community transmission. Everything that is happening in India today is proof beyond a doubt that the opposition is desperate. It is a proof beyond a doubt that they will do everything they can to shit on what Narendra Modi has achieved. They will do anything it takes to bring down Narendra Modi even if it is at the cost of the nation and its people.
I want you to take a moment and let this sink. At a time when people are dying, at a time when it is a matter of life and death, at a time when it is about standing up for your country and saving its life; the opposition has chosen to expose the most vulnerable group of people and use them to bring down Modi.
These are the monsters you voted for. Let that sink.
Am I glad today that Amit Shah rigged the General Elections! (i.e. if he rigged the elections) I would have probably done the same in his place. If I was leading this country today, there is no way I’d let opposition like these take control of my nation. Screw democracy! We don’t deserve it. We need a leader who can set things straight.
Today, I’ve understood what it means to be a nationalist. Today, I’ve understood who the real Anti-Nationals are. Today, I’m proud of the leader we have. It takes guts and enormous amounts of grit to stand up to something like this and still emerge victorious. Today, I am grateful for the steps he has taken to safeguard and prepare India for this pandemic. Today, I am ashamed of myself for not having stood up and spoken about this earlier for fear of what my left liberal friends would think. Today, I’m publicly declaring my support for the Modi government.
Call me a Bhakt or unfriend me, I don’t care.
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