Around 327BC, in his quest to expand the Macedonian Empire, Alexander annexed Punjab and Sindh (in present-day Pakistan). But after reaching a location named Taxila, his ambition to move further east was put to stop when his troops, exhausted and homesick by the long and arduous campaign, mutinied. And Alexander gave up and returned
That is close to what we had read in our schooldays, not from our history textbook but from the social science one. The passages were more like a popular folktale of Alexander’s interaction with the then defeated Indian King Porus, its veracity never questioned, far less established.
On 17 October 2013, at a political rally in Patna, a reference to Alexander’s arrival was made which made it to social-media headlines. It stated that Alexander had come as far as Taxila “the learning hub of ancient times, in Bihar”. And that, “Alexander’s army conquered the entire world, but was defeated by the Biharis. That is the might of this land.” That quote was made by the soon-to-be Prime Minister of the country, Narendra Modi. It wasn’t the first gaffe made by him. In fact, in the months preceding and since his election to the high post, it was just one more of the many gaffes made by him.
Sample a few more – post-Pulwama, recounting in an interview with the News Nation TV, Mr Modi recollected over-ruling Indian Air Force (IAF) officials on the timing of the air strike, he had ordered the bombardment of a Pakistani rebel camp inside Pakistan. “I said there is so much cloud and rain. There is a benefit. I thought the clouds can benefit us too. We can escape the radar… Ultimately, I said there are clouds, let’s go!” He claimed that his “raw vision” unlined the logic that heavy clouds could help Indian fighter jets avoid Pakistani radar, and so advised the Air Force to enter the enemy territory under a cover of clouds.
On the first Teachers Day (5 Sept 2014) after becoming the Prime Minister, Mr Modi talked to about 700 students in a packed auditorium. One girl, from Assam, posed a question on climate change, Mr Modi is said to have replied “The climate has not changed. We have changed. If we change then God has built the system in such a way that it can balance on its own.” Whatever that meant!
Of course, one would remember his great scientific theory of converting gas emanating from a sewer into fuel. This was on World Bio-Fuel Day in August 2018, when addressing students and scientists at Vigyan Bhavan (New Delhi), the Prime Minister spoke about a tea seller using a pipe and an inverted utensil to capture fumes escaping from a gutter and then used it to make tea! Add to that, his Einsteinic formula at an India-Canada collaboration gathering – (a+b)2=a2+2ab+b2, stressing that the extra “2ab” came from the synergy between the two countries.
Mr Modi has claimed that he first used a digital camera in 1988 and that he even ‘transmitted’ the image through email. I wonder what the image could have been of and who was it sent to! A quick question to the Google revealed 1988 to be the year when Burma repealed its Constitution and the Janta Party came into being which would dethrone Congress from its 400+ seats to less than 200, the very next year! More importantly, in 1988, neither the digital camera nor the email technology was available to the common man in India.
It is an endless list actually. If the irreverent Khushwant Singh were alive today, he would have come out with a “101 jokes of….” kind of publication! Pure gems really, each a step lower than the other – reaching utter depths of ignorance. These utterances were, by any yardstick, incredulous and incredible statements and claims – misinformed, ludicrous, slanderous and, more often than not, false and even outright lies. And all statements, without exception, made with sheer aplomb.
How did we, as a people, as a country, as a citizen, as an individual take and react to all those gaffes then?
We smiled, as one would at one’s indulgent child; some of us laughed, as if it was a great joke which, of course, it was; we mocked but that never got reported in bold Caps; we felt embarrassed, as any honourable citizen would (or should). But one was not sure how many people disapproved of those statements and particularly because of such statements coming from the country’s Prime Minister. Weren’t people embarrassed or angry? The media nor the social media provided any indication, far less any action. On the contrary (at least that is how it got widely reported and telecast), we went gaga over whatever he said, clapped, rung bells or clanked our metal plates from our balconies and roofs, at receiving such wisdom from the heavens – to be seen as prophecy – certainly an Avatar revealing his miracles to the masses!
One also began wondering about the PM’s speechwriters, who they could be and whether there was no one at the PMO to tick them. How could the PMO allow making the PM a laughingstock of the world? But after a while, giving the speechwriters and the PMO the benefit of doubt, one began to surmise, they didn’t really have such a free hand.
So, was the PM so naive, shallow, dumb and foolish as to make such statements?
How could he be? He had ruled over a state for over a decade, and had its people eating from his hands, and he couldn’t have done that by being naive, shallow, dumb or foolish. He couldn’t have achieved all that considering the PM had, by then, also established the reputation of being a great public speaker, or so one was made to believe, with a bloating arrogance to go with it!
So, one often wondered why he was so hell-bent on making and repeating such malicious, ridiculous, false statements, without any check. Was that because the Prime Minister was still in his “honeymoon” period? Was a larger-than-life aura getting built around him and the people in awe of him? Was there a shroud of fear that was perceptibly beginning to envelope the public? Questions ad infinitum.
Since Modi himself rarely sought to accept his gaffes, far less apologize for them and do course correction, was it that he didn’t care or worse, did not believe these, in the first place, to be gaffes at all? This assumption is becoming more and more possible to be true. It would be fair to believe that if he continued to make gaffes, one after another and each more incredulous than the one before, those could not have been random, off-hand or thoughtless speech. The gaffes couldn’t but be intentional and part of a method, purpose and even, strategy.
More importantly, as the scenario has unfolded, particularly in the last one-two years, and since the Corona period, it is becoming more clear that all gaffes were actually a bait, a false trick, a test missile for the Prime Minister to gauge how far the public could go along with him, whether they could sink to the lowest level! And when he became certain that he had become the “pied piper” and that the mesmerized public would readily follow him to their own destruction, then the agenda of absolute power based on RSS and Hindutva agenda came to fore with greater and forceful clarity and in all its wider dimensions.
Biju Negi is part of Hind Swaraj Manch
