Yesterday was the last nail in the coffin of Nehru’s and Gandhi’s India. And Ambedkar’s constitutional India as well. It was a Hindu dream that came true. But actually, it was all about Modi’s third term.
Ram Mandir. Babir Mosque. Synecdoche selections for different communities.
A temple didn’t win.
A mosque didn’t lose.
Only Modi won.
Afterall, Modi’s legacy is going to be more suffocating than Zia’s legacy. Because Zia was not as celebrated as Indians celebrate Modi.
How cool was Ranbir in Tamasha challenging all the norms and values?
How cool was Aalia Bhatt in her feminist movies?
How cool was Ayushman Khurrana in taking up bold scripts?
And Amitabh Bachan. How cool was he… till yesterday?
Imagine making a population of 204 million people irrelevant. Who could have done it except Modi? 204 million Muslim voters look as irrelevant as a minority that’s too minor.
But that is not just the end. South India didn’t celebrate yesterday. Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana etc. No. They stood with their liberal and secular values and didn’t celebrate yesterday. South Indians are perhaps the finest lot in the entire South Asian region.
Anyway. Does it look like Modi is coming again this year? Well, not sure. The constant radical stunts are not overused.
In the recent bi-elections of India where BJP completed a “hat-trick” was more of propaganda that they are going to win the same way in Lok Sabha. Objectively, BJP got a total of 48,133,463 votes while Congress got 49,077,907. This is a huge difference of around 1 million votes. And overall, Congress had significant improvements in votes from the last time.
So, maybe Modi isn’t coming again.
But Donald Trump is coming for sure. All he needs is judicial clearance and there is nothing stopping him. Ron DeSantis is gone. Nikki Haley will be next. And then, there will be Trump. Afterall, this is century of populism and going back to the era where things were difficult for minorities.
With Rishi Sunak in the UK, the white heads are re-thinking the world order again. One cannot get Arab nationality. The majority of Africa doesn’t welcome them. A white person cannot even dream to become a president or PM of any Asian or Arab or African country. Yet, people from these regions are populating the parliamentary benches of Europe and North America. This isn’t digestible anymore and a change in the system will be evident soon.
A lot of deviation. Like usual. But before the end, let’s applause those who didn’t join the myopic celebrations of yesterday.
Like Virat Kohli. Rohit Sharma. M. S. Dhoni. Anushka Sharma. The Bollywood didn’t stand but the Indian cricketers did. One may say that there are some Indian players taking the team ahead not only in the ground but off-field as well.
With that, let’s hope India learns from the mistakes Pakistan committed in 1970s and 1980s. Before it’s alarmingly late.
