A Confident Indian’s letter to Netas and Eminent People
- In Politics
- 11:58 AM, Mar 03, 2017
- Hemant Karandikar
Respected Netas and Eminent People,
As an ordinary voter, I am very amused that you can't make sense out of recent civic elections in Maharashtra in which BJP did very well overall and Shiv sena did well in Mumbai and Thane despite fighting against each other. You feign ignorance of Odisha's panchayat polls in which the BJP replaced the Congress as the main opposition party. You conveniently concluded that Modi's and BJP's popularity was going down, because they lost in Bihar and Delhi. Since you waste a lot of your time in coming to wrong conclusions, I thought I will take time out from my busy life (I earn by working every day) to make things easier for you to understand us.
What I am going to mention first, is last thing we come out in open for. But, it is the most important thing for us. We love when India beats its enemies whether it happens in a cricket match or in a war. We don't care if this is 'jingoism' in your jargon. And no matter what kind hearted Sudheendra Kulkarni tells us, Pakistan is our enemy. So Modi is our hero since he taught Pakistan a good lesson through surgical strikes. We are asking for more, but we are happy with him.
We don't have scars of partition since it happened well before our time, but we sense that it was terrible thing. We don't like this business of promoting Pakistan or those who want to break this country. We are angry with people like Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khaled. We are usually reticent, so you may think we tolerate this nonsense. We don't. Don't sell 'freedom of expression' to us. It isn't your property. It is ours and we know how to exercise it.
We know you are not perfect though you pretend that you are. We too aren't perfect. Unlike you, we don't pretend. We are ready to be loyal in exchange of things like help to get our problems with municipality or government solved, to get a hawker's or tapri license, or protecting us from a local goonda. Your opponents call it extortion and we know it is, but we need these small things to get on with our lives. We trade our loyalty if our 'hero' is honored by you by naming an university or building a monument or declaring a national holiday. We may also vote according to our caste. We know many of these things are symbolic.
What you don't get is that we can draw a line and rise above our petty concerns. We voted for Modi because he convinced us about his sincerity. It didn't matter what his opponents said because we had stopped believing in them after so many scams by Congress. When Modi banned 500 and 1000 rupee notes we knew that it is going to hurt us. But we also instantly knew that it is going to hurt those of you who had grown wealthy through scams. We therefore supported Modi's note ban. We resorted to bartering, we helped each other, we learned paytm and BHIM and we carried on with our difficult lives while the educated wealthy people and some parties were busy opposing it.
We don't care what you people talk on 'channels'. Nor we read your English newspapers. When we spend money on TV, it is not to watch you. Our priorities are clear - movies, matches, music, and serials. As to news, we get them from radio, what you call as vernacular newspapers, what people talk or what comes through Whatsapp or Youtube. We make exceptions like Modi's Independence Day speech. Pity we missed his 8th November speech, but it's there on youtube.
Your talk of secularism and tolerance makes no sense to us. Our land has welcomed one and all from all over the world. We willingly made them part of us. If they wanted to be different we let them be. We learn this from our traditions and our rishis and saints. But we get a feeling that we are being taken for granted by those who don’t respect this land and what it holds sacred. We get a feeling that our traditions and the wisdom that our forefathers have handed down to us are being belittled. We are clear that we are facing a major danger not just from enemy armies but also from terrorists who get their support and some people who are trying to take undue advantage of our democracy.
When we get a feeling that our way of life is threatened by those who have no respect for it and by those who count on their votes, we make up our mind and vote to prevent it. People like me can’t even fathom how great our heritage is, but we are wise enough to defend it. You may not notice it because at times we have no clear alternatives and we have to vote like you think we do.
Yes, we want jobs, better roads, hospitals, and education. We want safety. We also want to preserve our way of life and change only when we are convinced. We know most of you can’t deliver this. But when we believe that there is someone like Modi who can deliver even a small part of it, we rise above our immediate and pressing problems and vote.
We are still very angry with Congress for its scams and black money and letting our enemies attack us again and again through armies and terror cells. Though some of the black money has now got trapped in banks after note ban big politicians are still not in trouble despite looting us for decades. We are watching government’s actions.
If there is someone who is trying to bring changes in our lives it is Modi –we know this. When there is a strong local alternative to Congress and if it has done some work for us we prefer that in local elections. If someone stood by us during riots, he is our choice too. After all we have our petty problems and we can’t expect Modi to do it all.
Last but not the least: We take our chances even if they backfire on us at times. Don’t laugh at us because we are willing to experiment and we can deal with failure.
We are confident Indians. Hope you get that right.
Yours sincerely
A Confident Indian
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