Modi, Shah and fundamentalist CM Yogi are on a mad spree to deface and destroy all heritage and historic legacies of geographic India. ‘Bharat’, more popularly called India, may soon become ‘Modiamityogibhumi' in good time.
Ahmedabad has degenerated to Karnavati, Aurangabad to Sambhajinagar, Bhopal to Bhojpal. Lucknow to Lakshmanpur. Hyderabad to Bhagyanagaramu. Mahabubabad to Manukota. Mahbubnagar to Palamuru. New Delhi to Indraprashtha. The mad rightist groups want history to be erased from public memory. Hence, the brazen renaming of typical Hindu names for cities and towns has occurred without scantiest regard for the colourful past and brazenly so.
If the BJP-led NDA makes a comeback by any stroke of luck in 2019, the world will witness an India with strange names of locations that have added glory and pride over the centuries. The Modi administration has merrily consigned the secular component of the Constitution to the garbage yard that’s never going to be dug into ever again.
Most shockingly, the Congress and other secular forces have remained stoically silent at the ‘mauling of place names’ over the recent months. It’s only the judiciary that has bashed up the political executive fittingly on the ‘name change’ front. It never changed the names of its High Courts by even a syllable. But it did not react further probably in the absence of any public interest litigation or writ filed by citizens that feel affected mentally or sentimentally.
Interestingly, a British Conservative Party MP, Peter Bone, on November 2, in the ‘Daily Mail’, has blasted the very idea of building the ‘Statue of Unity’ as utter 'nonsense' saying, “Britain should not give any further aid to India. Most countries have raised eyebrows at the huge bronze-clad statue of Sardar Patel.
Britain had donated over 1.17 billion pounds (over Rs 9,492 crore) to India as foreign aid in the last five years. The colossal Patel statue has eaten up nearly Rs 3,000 crore.
So, Britain feels beaten down and hurt that funds given for various social projects including women's rights, renewable energy and encouraging “religious tolerance”, may have been diverted to some stupid projects that do not improve the quality of life of the common man.
The 2,000-tonne statue of Sardar Patel is, therefore, plain eyesore! As on record, the UK had donated 300 million pounds to India in 2012 when the project was started. India received 268 million pounds in 2013, 278 million pounds in 2014 and 185 million pounds in 2015. So, they suspect the Modi administration is plain populist and egocentric.
Critiques across the UK vehemently oppose any grant of aid to India as it is the world's fastest-growing economy and is already a world leader in several economic domains including space exploration and technology.
They are also aware of the fact that India gives more money to several poorer countries across the world than it receives as foreign donations despite having a vast majority of the population living in poverty. All this means lack of a political will that does away with bad administration focusing on wrong priorities.
The 182-metre replica of Sardar Patel is the world's tallest statue leaving behind the USA's Statue of Liberty (93 metre), Japan's Ushiku Daibutsu (120 metre) and even China's Spring Temple Buddha (153 metre).
The statue has been built to withstand winds of 180km/hour and earthquakes of up to 6.5 Richter Scale when annual cyclones and rain-fed floods keep ravaging the poor communities of India beyond control of the regional governments as their capacities are not being enhanced owing to inadequate supply of funds from the Union Government. Further, there is no human set of eyes which can see the statue clearly unless he walks away to a location at least five km away to contain the picture within the angle of vision.
Or else, one has to take a ‘chopper ride’ to enjoy the beauty of the gigantic structure and recognise it as that of the legendary Sardar.
Incidentally, Modi inaugurated the statue at the end of a toe nail of the statue. Someone smart amid the Congress told the media that Modi looked like a perfect bird dropping, not any better or different mainly because of his glittering white attire against the darker bronze.
Even more painfully, one has to cough out a minimum amount of 350 rupees just to enter the campus now touted as a grand tourist site.
So, needless to say the Sardar is going to be ignored at his own ground as no one can see him for the tilt of the head required to see above the waistline might break or injure the neck bones.
In a year or so, people will talk about the fun facilities available there -- food, flowers and fun to be seen around and enjoyed, eventually forgetting the Iron Man of India as he is not visible to any visitor at the place where he stands majestically.
The only people who can see him, if at all, are the ones aboard commercial or fighter planes, and that too if the route is fairly near.
The flight attendant or the pilots may have to speak over the speaker systems to alert the passengers about the most gigantic manmade statue standing on a relatively backward country on the planet, to peep through the windows and wonder at the structure! Without the tiniest piece of doubt, the Sardar statue has earned India only infamy and shame, not one bit of praise or admiration from any quarter!
It looks evident that the ABP News is servile to the BJP biggies for the ‘Deshka Mood’ survey they conducted just recently to predict that the Modi-led BJP is likely to win big in Odisha during the 2019 elections.
The more robust, methodically-conducted surveys by unbiased, unprejudiced agencies of India have all made it clear that the BJD is invincible and going to remain so during the general elections.
On the contrary, the credible agencies have forecast that it will not be a smooth ride for the NDA, which is projected to emerge with less than in 250 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats across the country.
The indications have already been crystal clear from the Karnataka by-elections where the NDA has bitten dust badly losing four out of five. Besides, Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh, later Jharkhand and more elsewhere will also suffer terrible setbacks only due to arrogance and splurging of people’s money on grossly wrong projects.
Modi is singularly a bit popular, but the saffron brigade has got on the nerves of the ordinary citizens. Youngsters of India keep expressing admiration for the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan for the commendable austerity measures he has taken moments after being sworn in. Modi better learn such moves from him! The cricketer seems to have picked better skills than the tea seller, maybe because of a wider range of exposure.
Lastly, the saffron fundamentalist groups are engaging in acts that offend the sacred Constitution of the land. They make fun of the Supreme Court ruling on the Sabarimala temple with regard to entry of younger women. Saffron brigades openly challenge the local administration that do their best to abide by the top court’s ruling.
The ‘Rule of Law’ is openly undermined, an act so bizarre that the international community cringes at. They squirm at the idea of setting shop in India for they are able to figure out that ‘ease of doing business’ in India is a very distant dream and not achievable in near future. Even the Shankaracharya seated in Puri talks nonsense. He says the courts have no role in temple matters as there cannot be any secular component in temple rituals or rites.
He keeps citing couplets or lines from mythical scriptures which mean nothing to a secular country of today. The seer imagines he has the last word in any matter relating to temple disputes.
Little does he know that he can be booked under law for madly determining what part is secular and what religious without having the slightest idea of what the Constitutional spirit is all about. God hammer some sense into the self-opinionated Shankaracharya’shead!
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)