The reasons why Mr Modi is not being given the fulsome praise some of us, like Mr Michael Vaz, Merces, feels is his just due, are various. To begin with, there is no doubt that on his becoming Prime Minister, there have been dangerous signs of the rise of the Hindu Right – Ghar Wapsi, beef bans, vandalizing of Christian churches. All this is happening with Mr Modi’s tacit consent.
With typical cowardice it is the Christian miniscule minority (unable to give as good as you get) is being targeted, the perpetrators knowing fully well that they will not be identified and punished. The beating to death, and lynching of a man on mere rumour of storing beef in his house in a Dadri village, is just one of the many instances of communal forces being given free reign in an effort to establish a Hindu rashtra. Typically, the State Government promptly offered Rs ten lakh compensation to the survivors of the murdered man. Life in India is evidently very cheap. Whether the perpetrators of this dastardly crime will ever be brought to book remains to be seen, bearing in mind the victim and the survivors belong to the millions of the poor. It’s sad Mr Vaz chooses to ignore this dangerous development which can have disastrous consequences for Goa if we are not careful.
Mr Modi adopts the air of a man who could not be bothered with such trivialities. In his all too frequent trips abroad, he is busy trying to woo foreign businessmen and industrialists to invest in India. Which is great. But, living as we are in the post-Christian era we cannot expect foreign investors from the West to be distracted by moral considerations. They will invest if they can make a fast buck while the going is good. The very fact that the assembled IT honchos clapped and laughed dutifully, and embraced him to boot, is a painfully ample proof of this. In all this euphoria, I hope Mr Modi realises that Nemesis has a way of finally catching up with us.
