There are bhakts diseased with denial, but there are also skeptics who are sensible.
After Modi's grand deceit on June 19, and his effort the next day to play up the deaths of Bihari soldiers for the upcoming state elections, many have wondered aloud: Is he really that bad? Would he lie to his people and play politics now? Aren't we, the 'Modi bashers', being cynical?
Perhaps, these skeptics say, he just misspoke on TV, or that his statement was misinterpreted by agenda-driven naysayers. Perhaps he's not campaigning for Bihar elections at all, but just filling the shoes of a leader who comforts a nation suffering collective grief.
Like I said, this is sensible skepticism, but it is also naive and shallow.
Let's think about it. Modi left his family to dedicate his life to politics and power. His youth was driven by the powerful RSS idea that Hindus need to shed their supposed impotency and show Muslims their place. He organised rallies, campaigns, agitations for the Sangh Parivar and learnt the mechanics of power at the grassroots. He planned the Ramjanmabhoomi movement, which left a slime of Hindu-Muslim violence across India in the early 1990s – weaponising faith for political gain, executing a toxic cultural manoeuvre.
For a whole decade after this, he manipulated the leaders of his party in Gujarat and paved way for his own rise. His cunning was so well-known that the top BJP leadership of the time had to exile him from the state so that it could run smoothly.
He oversaw the massacre of thousands of Muslims in 2002 and never came close to even expressing regret for it, forget an apology. “I had met a textbook case of a fascist and a prospective killer, perhaps even a future mass murderer,” political psychologist Ashish Nandy wrote about Modi in 2002, recalling a meeting with him in the early 1990s. “He had the same mix of puritanical rigidity, narrowing of emotional life, massive use of the ego defence of projection, denial and fear of his own passions combined with fantasies of violence – all set within the matrix of clear paranoid and obsessive personality traits.”
As CM of Gujarat, Modi invested millions of rupees (public money) into PR, to cleanse the stain of anti-Muslim hatred, while ruthlessly killing political opponents and Muslims in Gujarat via Amit Shah. With the aide of a coterie of useful idiots, he crafted the fiction of the 'Gujarat model', and dismantled his own saviour, LK Advani, to become the PM in 2014.
Since then, he has perfected the cult of himself. All government schemes are advertised with his picture, industrialists call him king of kings, fellow politicians call him a God's gift, and he has had movies and books on him. There's also a temple in his fucking name. His IT cell spreads lies to deify him and demonise his critics and opponents, be it Muslims, Dalits, students or activists.
He controls and manipulates the mass media to spin himself as the saviour of the 'Indian destiny'.
He did not even care to consult the RBI or his own Finance Minister before demonetisation; made a tyrannical, Muslim-loathing priest the CM of UP; legalised corruption by cramming electoral bonds scheme through parliament and has thrown the people of Kashmir into a darker night of cruelty and violence.
Most recently, this man and his party incited a riot against Muslims, after taking an aim at their citizenship. After bungling India's response to Covid-19 and treating migrant workers with institutional contempt, he simply gave up. People are now left to fend for themselves.
IF THIS MAN, hardened by decades of hate, power, cunning, manipulation, self-obsession, cannot lie to his people about their national interest, then who can? He is perfectly capable of doing it. In fact, his entire life has been a training to safely execute such monumental fraudulence.
And that's what he is doing right now – fiercely and nastily protecting himself and his image by lying to his people and trying to milk electoral gain.
So skeptics, don't lay waste to your sensible instincts by getting distracted by these dull and tiresome charades about 'agenda', 'Congressi', 'Chinese agents', anti-nationals', 'jihadi' conspiratorial bullshit. Your skepticism is healthy, but misplaced. Know evil when you see it.