23 December 2019
Suddenly it appears that the plot has not been just lost, but the henchmen themselves have been left hanging out to dry! O’ not once but thrice and perhaps more, Mr Modi chose to decry the NRC. He listed the SC as the main culprit forcing his government to undertake the NRC in Assam even. He made such a hue about how the envy over his successive electoral victories is causing the Opposition to foment the trouble now that has possessed the country.
In an other day, this very rally at Ramlila Maidan, would have been jam packed like how the rally of the INC was a week back. Despite buses hired to transport people, the empty chairs and lack lustre crowds were not ‘screened’ away from Twitterati and social media vloggers! The performance itself was off pitch, it screeched and as if the old man was hemming and hawing, making it all about himself, as he tried to extricate himself from the situation into which he had been led! Of course, when you see the Twitter retort to Mr Modi’s personal handle from disparate sources of opinion, you realise that the spectrum is wide, the anger is genuine and the disappointment in Mr Modi is ‘real and worrisome’. If BJP were a corporate, then it just lost the credibility of its leading and some say, only brand!
He doesn’t look dynamic any more. Look at him on stage, needing props, look at his stringing of his senior cabinet colleagues by abandoning the narrative of his party manifesto, the build up by his Man Friday and Numero Duo, in rally after rally in West Bengal that got the BJP a rich haul in the Lok Sabha in that state! Look at him, making his government appear suddenly listless, as his Home Secretary’s written submission to Parliament about opening of detention camps across all states and UTs was apparently without Mr Modi’s sanction and knowledge! Look at the Parliamentary declarations by not just Mr Rajnath Singh but Mr Amit Shah during the deliberations of the CAB before it was passed into law, where they made the clear linkage between CAA and NRC and how the main objective of the government was to address the issue of illegal residents who are ‘termites’. Did Mr Modi’s chief of bureau mislead him about where he was speaking, that it was not New York by any stretch, not any General Assembly special session, but the launch of the BJP’s campaign for Delhi Assembly elections?
Such is the turmoil created by Mr Modi’s speech yesterday that even CM Mamata joined in with her accusing the MHA of stepping out of line over NRC. The general public will no doubt be baffled by Mr Modi’s talk. As PM if he had given this as a 8 O’Clock special like he has done in the past, it would have perhaps made tremendous confusion across all shades of political opinion. But he made these statements at a campaign rally in the capital. If one took Mr Modi at face value, then one would simply stop protesting and stop worry about the NRC and the BJP would have lost face with its core base, including heaping embarrassment to all those votaries who recorded videos and hosted their sales pitch for CAA with so much effort in the last few days! (https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/pm-narendra-modi-ramlila-maidan-rally-indian-muslims-caa-nrc-1630546-2019-12-22)
So Mr Modi made short work of every thing folks hit the streets for and tussled with police everywhere, in Assam, Gujarat and UP the brutality was apparent, with UP leading the tally of deaths including that of a 8 year old due to gunshot wounds by police firing, which even now is being denied by the UP Police. So the CAA and NRC have nothing to do with resident Indian Muslims who were born in India. The CAA is for helping people seeking refuge in India who have suffered for long. NRC is not being done for the country, it was done in ASSAM at the insistence of the SC. Please read about CAA and NRC yourselves, you are all educated people. Please do not be misled by Congress and other opposition parties, by urban naxals, who are trying to get back at me. I place a challenge before the opponents in public that let them go through my body of work and find one scheme one rule which reeks of prejudice toward any community! These words would have done late Indira Gandhi or late Rajiv Gandhi proud! So is Mr Modi now trying to prise out from his image so far an Atal Behari Vajpayee while forcing Mr Amit Shah to be an extreme version of Mr Advani?
The social media world and even mainstream newspapers and political analysts can take what ever lesson they wish to draw from all of the above. From where I have viewed Mr Modi, he is simply being himself. He just set a cat amongst the pigeons, both to his base and to his detractors, and reminded everyone how he would remain the ultimate arbiter. Now if within the next few days, the festivities of the year end dampen or divert the ardour of the youth who are at the forefront of this protest series, if vacations of the winter shutter down campuses and forces the agitations to peter out, then Mr Modi would claim this as victory for himself! He would prove his credibility factor was still unassailable, no matter how ridiculous or blatant his contentions!
If would appear, that Mr Amit Shah has been sent a message too, for in 100 minutes of his speech, Mr Modi laid the blame for NRC on the Congress Party, he also said that his government had not made any rules for it, nor discussed it, and all this was childish accusations from Congress leaders to simply ruin his record. The MHA was through the ‘sarkari mouth piece’ ANI issuing in tweet after tweet ‘sources’ two bits, about the NRC. It said passports, Aadhaar, driving license or voter ID card was all not proof of citizenship. Of course, the MHA was amplifying their Minister’s press interviews, given to ‘Bhakt Owned and Operated’ ones involving Ms Navika Kumar! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xre3SK23SoY) But the ministry mandarins will act today, the BJP IT Cell was faster, for even as Mr Modi spoke, numerous tweets about NRC and CAB-CAA and about the goal of having segregation, sequestration and finally deportment of Muslims, got deleted by the tonnes! Of course, the Dark Web and other ‘resistance’ was busy capturing these for posterity and keeping track of all this massive effort, even as a few were trying to make a Trump like ticker tape for Mr Modi, listing his ‘lies’ numerically, fact checking his claim, including that NRC notification actually happening in 2003 in NDA1! So today the MHA or ANI handles will get busy in their effort to tow the ‘new line’ cast by Mr Modi.
Did Mr Modi talk of repealing any thing? No. Did he say categorically that no Muslim born in India need fear the CAA & NRC? Yes. So this is a volte face! But a phased one? I feel acutely that MEA Mr Jaishanker is to be credited with this speech, dissociating the government from all the Muslim baiting and sloganeering about evicting ‘gaddhar’ ( traitor) that was being indulged in gay abandon by the IT cell and its minions. Incidentally, even ace shuttler Saina Nehwal is a minion! Just read her tweet during Mr Modi’s speech “I m hearing a thought provoking speech from @narendramodi sir #RamlilaMaidan”(https://www.freepressjournal.in/india/saina-nehwal-and-a-lot-of-twitter-handles-are-writing-the-exact-same-thing-about-modis-ramleela-speech) and you realise that Mr Modi’s speech was planned to trend in this fashion, it was a concerted effort to defuse the situation in India and abroad!
NRC is now clearly for another day. That said, the narrative of how Muslims ‘rioted’ and caused damage to public property and injured ‘dutiful policemen’ ( Mr Modi made an effusive reference to thousands of policemen sacrificing their lives in line of duty, in a tone and deference that he has never reserved even for military personnel so far!) are the campaign tools fashioned for the base to carry, the rhetoric for Delhi’s Assembly elections due now and perhaps even carry forward to West Bengal a whole year later…
indiarubberman.com 