India or Bharat - still smells of Modi
Perhaps, the military secretary to Narendra Modi would do yeoman’s service to the people of Bharat/India in particular and to the world in general, if the two books that I suspect Modi to be repeatedly reading with fondness, are removed. By virtue of Modi's consistently, albeit inconsistent behaviour, both political and otherwise, in regard to the Indian Constitution, I may have found the answers to his minds devious machinations in the two books that Amit Shah may have gifted to him — first Prince Machiavelli and secondly, Sun Tzu’s, The Art of War.
Every step that Modi has been making in the last nine years of his rule of bigotry over India, is a leaf taken out of these two books. Prince Machiavelli is a devious person who masters the art of political machinations, deception, deceit and of diabolical intrigues, real and imaginary. Similarly, Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese general has the most cunning recommendations to make when dealing with the enemy; one of which is, “Surprise the enemy”, and Modi for his entire political career has been doing just that. First, he massacres innocent Muslims in Gujrat and then adorns the saffron robes (considered to represent spirituality and nobility in Hinduism) to appear as a man of peace — he combines in his persona, both The Prince and The General. And, both for the wrong reasons.
Emerging from this befogged mind, he ‘surprised’ both the host (President of India) and the guests (G20 leaders) with an official banquet invitation card that said on the occasion of the G20 summit, “the President of Bharat requests the pleasure of the company of…”. In doing so, he lit up a new fire, for the ever-hungry print and hungrier electronic media. They have since the issuance of the invite gone on an overdrive, debating whether India is Bharat or is Bharat, India. The entire attention of the local and global media was deviously turned away from what was until then, the flavour of the media, that is the gruesome state-sponsored terrorism in the North Indian States (provinces) and Kashmir. Modi put up a great decoy to chase; he achieved his purpose. So, while Bharat (Modi) fetes the G20 leaders at a summit dinner; his notorious law enforcers are freely partaking in the cold-blooded murder of innocent minorities in the Mizoram, Assam and the top favourite target, the state of Kashmir.
To the global audience, since 1947, when Pakistan was carved out as a ‘Muslim State’, India in contrast, has projected itself as a ‘secular’ country. This was meant to showcase Indian society as tolerant and peace loving. The diversity in religion, creed, caste, colour and language that India as a country had, was submerged in the loud narrative of its being a ‘secular’ state where all citizens, had equal rights. The population inclusivity principle remained its strongest selling point till the departure of Nehru from the temporal world.
The government of the ‘Butcher of Gujrat’ has unleashed upon the Muslims, the worst form of violence and the Christians, Dalits, and the untouchables have not been spared either. In the seven sister states (Manipur, Mizoram, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Tripura) of North-East India, where secession is brewing, and the powder keg that the centre sits upon in Delhi will find out soon, how it will blow up in their faces. The ruthless massacre of innocent citizens reflects the communal mindset of Modi and his handpicked minister for interior, nay terrorist, Amit Shah.
Women, men and children are killed in Kashmir and other provinces with devilish impunity and utter disregard to basic human expectations of justice and respect. Women and modesty are outrageously clubbed to death. Men, watch helplessly, their mothers and daughters being picked up by the law enforcement agencies.
Just as India, hoodwinked its non-aligned status to the global spectators, while it actually was sitting in the lap of ‘Moscow’, so is the case of its appearance as a, ‘secular’, country. It is not secular. India today, under Modi represents a communal mindset, emerging out of the concept of Hindu Veta.
Fanatic supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are not a representative of an average Indian in reality, contrary to what the name suggests. The BJP tore down mosques, burnt shrines and graveyards, accosted Muslims on the streets asking them to chant praise for Ram, the Hindu deity. Upon refusal, these innocent people were beaten to death in full glare of the public eye.
Recently, a school teacher, obviously a devoted disciple of the monstrous Modi, asked the entire class to slap their Muslim classmate as a punishment. The students queued up to follow the teacher’s command, probably oblivious of how they destroyed their classmate’s self-esteem and respect by slap their innocent class-fellow’s face. That is the real face of India, and the projected secularism, a complete farce. The G20 leaders, upon landing in New Delhi, were given eye patches to wear. They looked at India as a market of 1.4 billion people, an opportunity, and a prospect.
Modi, by inviting under the banner of ‘Bharat’, also thoughtfully attempted to decimate the challenge of the opposition parties who have recently formed a unified platform, with an apt acronym INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance), a front for 26 political parties. Modi, ofcourse, is under threat of INDIA exploding in his face in the 2024 elections. To remove synonymity between India and INDIA, he cunningly devised the plan to sway the attention from the challenge of the association and to hoodwink the Indian people that there is no importance to be placed in India, as a name, for it represents slave mentality, because according to him, the British had popularised the name, India. Relying on holy scriptures, that mention Bharat, as in Mahabharata, he has yet again appealed to the communal forces to reject not India, the country, but instead the political group INDIA. This is Prince Machiavelli in action.
Shashi Tharoor, the intellectual and former Foreign Minister of India has rightly advised Modi in a tweet, “while there is no constitutional objection to calling India, ‘Bharat’ which is one of the country’s two official names, I hope the government will not be so foolish as to completely dispense with ‘India’ which has incalculable brand value built over centuries… .”
In a meeting on the name and union of the country, the constituent assembly of India agreed on 17th September, 1949, that ‘Hindustan’ must be dropped and both Bharat and India should be recognised as official names. The attempt last year to revoke India as the official name was undone by its Supreme Court.
In his book The Great Mughals and Their India, Dirk Collier writes, “Historically, the Persian word ‘Hindustan’ meaning ‘land of the Indus’ refers to the areas around and beyond the Indus, or, by extension, to the historical heartlands of the Vedic or Hindu civilisations, that is all the lands where the ‘Hindus’ (the heirs of that Vedic civilisation) used to live…”. The Achaemenids used a term, ‘Hind’ to describe the lower Indus basin — the word ‘Isthan’ meaning place was added around 1st century AD. Alexander of Macedonia recorded his visits to the area, inclusive of Multan, as Indus associated with River Indus.
Bharat for the communal mind of Modi is more suitable because it is mentioned as, “Bharat Varsha”, in the Puranic Literature and in the Mahabharata. The land between, “sea in the South and the abode of snow in the North”, is described as Bharata in the Puranas. The online narrative states that ‘India is derived from the river Sindhu (Indus) and has been in use since Herodotus (5th century BCE).’ The Persians pronounced it as ‘Indus’ and later by the Greeks it was coined as India. The Rig Veda also mentions Indus River as Sindhu. The World History Encyclopedia mentions that the English term India is from Greek ‘Ivoia’ and via Latin, India. The name India is mentioned in King Alfred’s translation of ‘Orosius,’ even William Shakespeare has mentioned the name India, in his plays.
Even today Indians refer to India as ‘Hindustan’ because in their misplaced sense of judgement, they feel it represents, unity and diversity — far from truth. Indian movies, have dialogues that extoll, ‘Bharatmata ki Jai’. In Hindu culture, ‘Mata’ [Mother] is the ultimate limit of reverence. The defenders of this thought believe that Bharat is a more secular name than Hindustan, because the latter is made of Sanskrit words, ‘Hindus’ and ‘Isthan’ [land of the Hindus]. This definition represents inexactitude today’s India of Modi. The masked Hindu Veta spiritual urge, in Modi, is as regressive as the word can mean.
Relying on historical evidence, inherently refutable though, Shashi Tharoor has recently cited that Jinnah opposed the name ‘India’, for he thinks that Jinnah thought it implied that India was a successor state to the British Raj and Pakistan a seceding state. In the several authorised and unauthorised biographies of Jinnah, this subject has not received much mention or attention. The name ‘Pakistan’ was beautifully crafted and the Quaid embraced the coinage. What he may have opposed is the refusal to call itself Hindustan, the land of Hindus — the Quaid mentions his consternation in a letter to Lord Mountbatten. Gandhi and Nehru represented secular thought and hence would have never wanted the country to be known with a name suggesting Hindu dominance. I believe, this is an overdrive of historians with fertile imagination, to make this aspect a point of serious debate. As said, be it India, Hindustan or Bharat, it smells only of Modi — who represents Hindu Veta and not secularism.
In his book, The Paradoxical Prime Minister, Tharoor writes about Modi in the following words: “He says one thing and does another. He gives voice to a number of liberal ideas (such as the Constitution being his holy book, and Sab Ka Saath, Sub Ka Vikas) while at the same time pandering to some of the most illiberal elements in Indian society, on whom he depends for political support. Another paradox is how a PM who prides himself on effective governance has, through his silence, appeared to condone the worst aspects of misgovernance — communal riots, lynchings, the violence of Gaurakshaks and so on … so who is the real Narendera Modi? A noble, selfless leader who acts effectively in the interest of all his countrymen or an autocratic, right-wing bigot who is interested only in power and converting plural India into a Hindu Rashtra? I do feel that the latter part of Tharoor’s opinion is quite accurate. In support of this, I quote his own dedication to the book, in which literally he answers himself to the question raised, for it reads brilliantly in just two lines, “to the people of India who deserve better.” Yes, they deserve, better, any, but Modi.
Sirajuddin Aziz is a freelance writer. All information and facts are the sole responsibility of the writer