Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation

Visvas versus False Narrative

Just as the Modi government completed fifty days a group of self-styled guardians and conscience keepers of the country wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister Modi. The ruse was to write to him and give the impression to the world at large that India under Modi is in a state of ferment and conflict.

In order to foist a false narrative of India these “celebrities” have periodically indulged in expressing selective outrage. That they work to a political agenda is evident especially when one analyses that most of them were and continue to remain the standard bearers of communist parties and the left and ultra-left ideology in India. They couch their fascist tendencies with a veneer of liberalism, they colour and camouflage their disdain for the faith and reverence of the millions of this country with call for protecting secularism, for them the marginalised sections of society are meant to be used for political objectives, they speak for the empowerment of these sections but have hardly ever done anything towards actualising it.

These very people who kept silent when demands for India’s disintegration had been raised in the past, when slogans of terror found echo in some campus of the country and the demand for India’s tukde tukde were being made. Among these 49 signatories are Urban Naxals who relentlessly pushed the Naxal’s divisive agenda of breaking apart the Indian Union, of destroying the Constitution of India and of wrecking our parliamentary democracy. Through their selective outrage they wish to retard India’s growth, they wish to block the unfolding of a New India. The advent of a New India will essentially decimate their theories of class conflict and minority victimhood.

The renewed mandate for Prime Minister Modi in 2019 is an assertion of the marginalised. They have felt a palpable change and transformation in their lives, from inclusion, to connectivity, from a roof over their head to access to clean fuel and sanitation, from financial inclusion to start-up support and now Prime Minister’s assertion and call for reaching piped water to every household, the marginalised have clearly read the intentions behind these actions – that of empowering them and opening up the doors of opportunities before them. Prime Minister Modi has clearly earned their trust – Visvas – they realise that he does not want them to remain as mere appendages to a political ideology or class but wants them to rise as equal stakeholders and drivers in the creation of a New India.

A section of the elite urban intelligentsia clearly feels threatened by this subaltern assertion. They see the narrative going out of their control, they see their capacities for fear mongering being reduced, they realise that in a New India their political ideology and narrative is failing and that is why they direct their ire at Prime Minister Modi. Their campaign to impose a false narrative is a reflection of their failure.

(The writer is a Member, National Executive Committee (NEC), BJP and Chairman of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation. Views expressed are personal)