Is Prime Minister Narendra Modi never ashamed of his statements that are beyond the truth?

‘Though this be madness yet there is method in it’
– Hamlet, Shakespeare

When the Portuguese rule was established in Goa, was the Mughal rule established in the ‘major parts of India’? Recently, a small debate broke out in the mainstream media regarding this development which happened six hundred years ago. The background of this debate was Prime Minister Modi’s recent visit to Goa, where he had made a similar claim in the given argument.

However, if the recorded details about it in history textbooks were enough, to test the veracity of the case, it was told that Afonsa de Albuquerque (1453–1515), a Portuguese fighter who took control of Goa in 1510, Whereas Babur (1483-1530) laid the foundation of the Mughal Empire in a way by defeating Ibrahim Lodhi in the battle of Panipat.

This blatant mistake may raise fresh questions on the quality of Modi’s speechwriters, who in their laziness may not have bothered to check the facts, or may have been increasingly convinced that Prime Minister Modi’s No one investigates whatever comes out of Mukharvind.

Be that as it may, this statement would not have brightened the image of the Prime Minister of 130 crore population, when this news reached out not only through print, electronic media but also through social media.

However, this gap of sixteen years may seem very minor, if we look back today the details of Prime Minister Modi’s Maghar visit two years ago. As an interpolation, let us tell you that Maghar is the city of UP, where Sant Kabir breathed his last.

In this journey of Maghar, Mr Modi actually took another big leap when he covered the period of about five hundred years in one moment. The Prime Minister, who arrived there on the 620th birth anniversary of Kabir, almost astonished the people by saying that ‘Baba Gorakhnath (11th century), Kabir (398-1518) and Nanakdev (1469-1539)’ used to sit together and discuss ‘spirituality’. ‘

Of course, the prime minister’s speechwriters cannot always be blamed for everything that goes beyond the facts, even when such claims make headlines and are ridiculed for such fabricated claims.

Experts can tell that making such statements, which are factually incorrect, this is not a new development, which has come to the fore after becoming the Prime Minister of a huge country like India, which is called the world’s largest democracy!

If one wants, one can investigate such statements from his Chief Minister’s time, where he seems to be speaking ‘factually wrong’ things.

For example, in his speech at the inauguration of a hospital in Gujarat in 2013 (2013), he claimed that ‘Shyamaprasad Mukherjee, ‘was the great son of Gujarat and who built India House in London’. He also added that ‘this great son of Gujarat was in regular contact with Vivekananda and Dayanand Saraswati.’

By the way, the reality was that here he was talking about Shyamji Krishna Varma (born – October 1857), a resident of Kutch Mandvi in ​​Gujarat, who was a revolutionary of India, a lawyer, a journalist and he was later in Europe itself. He was settled and there he died in Geneva in 1930. The ‘India House’ he built in London had become a haven for the revolutionaries of India.

It is possible that some analyst may say about this gap or change of name that anyone’s tongue slips and what to talk about!

If this is accepted, then what will he say about the statements made by him in different assembly conferences, in which his ‘views Suman’ are found scattered, which at times seem clearly beyond the truth.

For example, at the Patna Rally (2013) he claimed that Alexander (356 BC – 323) had reached Bihar and was defeated by the Biharis—it was a different matter that Oleksandr, known to us as Sikandar, had Never crossed the Ganges.

Similarly, in the same speech, he did not tell Taxila to be located in Bihar, while it is in Pakistan, not only did he associate the name of the great Chandragupta Maurya (321 BC, 297) with the Gupta dynasty (AD 319-467).

Of course, when a person often says things that are inconsistent with the facts and the fascinated part of the media or which is called Godi media, they keep on praising them, then such a process goes on increasing.

By the way, we cannot say that every statement of his beyond the fact can be included in the category of forgetting or slipping. You will notice that through his chosen words/sentences or his own words, he is building a consensus on what is related to his non-inclusive agenda.

After assuming the office of Prime Minister for the first time, recall the statement he made on the floor of Parliament in the name of the vote of thanks for the President’s address. In this, he talked about the ‘slave mentality of twelve hundred years’.

He said, ‘The mentality of slavery of twelve hundred years is troubling us. Many times we meet a person a little higher than us, then we do not have the strength to raise our heads.

The common Indian had been hearing this since childhood that India had lived in ‘two hundred years of slavery’, which refers to the period of two hundred years of British rule. Now by extending that period to 1200 years, Mr. Modi was seen influencing his entire view of looking at history.

We should not forget that this thing presented in the intellectuals of the Sangh Parivar or in its own books is an integral part of the thinking of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

It is a fact that many of the invading kings who came during this period were Muslim rulers. Modi’s statement, extending slavery to 1200 years instead of 200 years, completely ignores the fact that while the British did not make India their home, before this, all the invaders from outside made it their country, the culture of the country Contributed to the development of India, which gave birth to the Ganga-Jamni tehzeeb in the country.

Similarly look at his claim that Jawaharlal Nehru did not attend Sardar Vallabhbhai’s Patel’s funeral (2013), whose factlessness was so much published in newspapers from Congress leaders, so much evidence was presented that he had to regret his point. had to reveal.

Can anyone say that such statements of his would have been made by mistake, he would be ignorant about such huge historical facts or there would be a purpose behind it? It is clear that this thinking of setting Nehru in opposition to Patel is not only beyond the facts, but the effort behind it is the intention of moving forward the agenda of the Sangh itself.

What do the facts say?

Patel himself, anticipating that vested interests would try to create a rift between him and Nehru, said on 2 October 1950, just three months before his death:

‘Our leader is Jawaharlal Nehru. Bapu appointed him as his heir in his life itself and also announced this. It is the duty of Bapu’s soldiers to accept his orders. Anyone who does not accept this command from the heart will be declared a sinner before God. I am not an unfaithful soldier. It is not important to me where my place is, I only know that I am at the place where Bapu told me to stand.'(Translated from: Pyarelal, Purnahuti, Chaturth Khand, Navjeevan Prakashan, Ahmedabad, p. 465.)

In his article ‘A Birthday Book’ (1949) in the book ‘Nehru Abhinandan Granth’, prepared on the completion of sixty years of Pandit Nehru, he had discussed the importance of Nehru as the country’s beloved, the hero of the people and their leader and Nehru as a man who is always ready to take the advice of the people against the prejudices revealed about him by vested interests:

..Contrary to the impressions created by some interested persons and eagerly accepted in credulous circles, we have worked together as lifelong friends and colleagues, adjusting ourselves to each other’s point of view as the occasion demanded and valuing each other’s advice as only those who have confidence in each other can”…

(… Have taken each other’s advice in the same way as people who trust each other…)

We will notice that whether by mistake or consciously, this process of expressing out of fact statements about events, persons, communities is not limited to the ancient or medieval past, it is about our immediate past and about the present. See it exposed.

For example, would anyone today want to remember how Mr Modi had presented demonetisation, how he claimed that all the crises of the economy would be removed, black money would end, terrorism would be eradicated from Kashmir, etc. The Tughlaq type of decree gave a tremendous blow to the economy, which he does not feel the need to review.

Or how, in his address to the nation in favor of the abolition of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir, he had told that how the continuation of this section is a hindrance in the progress of the state- it had also made a controversial claim about how Jammu and Kashmir was health and It is backward from other states in terms of education, while the reality was the opposite.

You may recall that when there was a massive agitation over the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act (NRC and CAA), dharnas began parallel to Shaheen Bagh in various parts of the country – involving Muslim women, students-youths and democratic forces. After seeing the tremendous participation of the people of Delhi, Modi announced in a public meeting in Delhi that his cabinet had never talked about NRC etc., while there was all the evidence that his exclusive colleague Amit Shah and others had taken the floor of the Parliament. But how was this matter taken forward?

Another similar claim was that of Modi, that electoral bonds will promote transparency, whereas today the opposite picture is in front or about the encroachment of Indian territory by China – all the evidence of which is publicly available – Modi still believes that China Has not entered anywhere.

By the way, how can we see all such things beyond the truth – which come out of the mouthpiece of the Prime Minister of this country of more than 130 crore population?

Shall we assume that every politician speaks in this manner in front of the public or shall we add to the Goebbels-like strategy used in the totalitarian experiments that came to the fore in the last century’s thirties and forties – which led to mass destruction and say that How a lie repeated over and over again starts to look like the truth.

But the bigger question, I think, is how, not only the common people, but also the people who are said to be highly educated, go on silently accepting the growing gap between the real situation and such claims, without asking questions. Not only this, those who are included in the category of fiction readily share all such things among their friends, family members, colleagues, whether it is an act of patriotism.

Certainly questions of concern are being raised on this issue, people are asking how India is facing ‘fire hosing of falsehood’ and what should be done about it?

In fact, during the tenure of the former President of America, we can see afresh the discussions about how critics have interpreted Trump’s statement or every pseudo-statement, and understand how fast people accept lies. Huh.

We can see, by turning back old newspapers, that analysts also developed a way to measure Trump’s lies and reported at the end of his term that he lied  30,573 times during these four years, which meant that on an average every day he Used to make false claims 21 times.

Here we are presenting a hallmark of Trump’s lies, which he boldly exposed to the American public:

‘…Barack Obama was the founder of the Islamic State; Texas Governor Ted Krause’s father, John F. were involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy; He saw thousands of Muslims celebrate the 9/11 terror attacks in New Jersey; Or he won the election (while he lost the election by 25 lakh votes).

Knowledgeable people who have scrutinized Trump’s statements and speeches have clarified it this way.

According to him, if a lie is to be believed, then first the belief in the liar must be strong; Why do people believe in lies? Research shows that it is easy to understand.

It is because of this that man wants to be in control; Third, people believe a lie only when they find themselves in a critical situation; As much as people have less control over their lives, they try to restore it through brain exercises. And then comes Donald Trump, who is notorious for spreading lies, he has taken control of the imagination of many people who find themselves in a critical position about their past, present and future.

What is to be expected, such a process will accelerate in India too, which will without hesitation or hesitation start such parallel investigations, as did the newspapers etc. in the early period of Trump’s tenure.

It is said that the price of democracy is eternal vigilance. Today its importance has become fresh again.

(Subhash Gatade is a Left activist, writer and translator.)