Making of a Nation

For the last two months, I was in Ahmadabad. My Kerala friends used to ask me how Modi is; none of them somehow asked me how Ahmadabad is or Gujarat is. Have identifying establishments and places by the big name which rules it has emerged into a fashion? On a wider perspective it is unjust to think so but on a closer analysis it is partially justifiable too (jaisaa Modi vaisaa Gujarath). Recently, 4,500 doctors in the city was held up due to a one day seminar on health presided by the Chief Minister. All the state controlled hospitals here remained virtually closed for a whole day, leaving many thousands of patients in pains as such, postponing even surgeries serious or silly. I don’t think that Modi wanted it to be so. The problem is with the machinery that hums along with. Ahmadabad has a Vice-chancellor who is alleged to have used his official car to pick his pet dogs and moved in another luxury piece which he sanctioned for one of his subordinates. Is it Modi’s fall? Can Modi alone be alleged to be responsible for the beggars, who carefully disappear into the kachada barrels outside city apartments every day morning? I could see people sleeping in the open, even at so cool a weather. Recently, a member of a social service organization who participated in a mission of distributing used cloths said, “At every point, we were received like Tanzanian devils preying on its catch.” The roads are wide (guarded by dogs everywhere); power is uninterrupted; malls are grand and clubs are fine. 

All the political icons of India bear good and bad points in their progress card. There were communal riots even before Modi was born? I have a few questions. Could Hitler alone have brutally bounced upon a whole race? No, never. Good or bad, there is a Modi in each one of us, so is a Hitler. It was you who ordered inquisition of a whole village, in the name of the Holy See. It was you who appeared as tsunami; you were hurricane Katrina; you are everywhere. Do not disregard my words; you are the one who is going to be the prime minister of India. At the same time, you will continue to be the subject too. You violate others modesty, you plunder, you rape, you ….. If you are as harmless as a newborn chick, so will be your prime minister too. He is created from the rib bones of your great Self. Voting is just the show of a privilege; you have already elected your prime minister. The adage goes saying, ‘you see only what you have painted,’ which means, everything around you is your own creation. We think and think on multitude of things, from morning to evening. Why not we do just one thing each day to qualify us for the best prime minister of India? When you change a little, you modify India a little. Instead of Modifying or Rahulizing India, let us first humanize ourselves. 

Joseph Mattappally