Why do we fall in love? I would posit that we do not fall in love because the object of our love is captivating, Charming and exceptionally brilliant. We fall in love because we are ready to fall in love. The theory is quite unromantic but I have a feeling that it is quiet true. It is represented in another as a drier postulate, the age-old saying- Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.
The protagonist is no longer important. The actors of the play become incidental once the time is ripe, the idea they represent becomes critical. That is what has happened to Narendra Modi in the North-East.
Narendra Modi is not a person any longer. Narendra Modi is now a thought, an idea and an ideology. Every election of Narendra Modi is now an existential struggle for civilizational continuity of India. With his foolhardy approach to the national polity, where Rahul Ghandy keeps shifting from Topidhari to Janeudhari to Chogadhari , Congress has demonstrated a thorough lack of respect for the intelligence of the people and exasperated the people beyond the boundaries of their patience.
The North-East has always faced abject apathy from the various dispensations which ruled from Delhi. The North-East, the Seven Sisters, as they are fondly called, were made into Victorian-era kids who should not speak unless they were spoken to. Rather then pushing the nation into positive action after the pathetic political debacle of 1962; we, as a nation, rather retired into a royal sulk which extended for decades. We were fine with signing cheques and tolerated the discontent and violence in the North-east as it rarely touched the mainland, in the way Punjab or Kashmir violence did. As we went over-board trying to win the hearts and minds of the Kashmiris, which danced on the international dance-floor, backed by middle-eastern and Pakistani funding; we ignored the East. The demography changed, the region suffered and we sat fiddling our fingers.
We ignored the North-East even when there were pressing Military and diplomatic reasons not to do so. China had poked its wily fingers into our sleepy eyes in 1962 but we continued to sleep. Even to get Tawang into our fold, back from Lhasa administration, we waited for sly, swift action of non- Army (then) Assam Rifles, an act done without the knowledge of Nehru inviting his infamous wrath. North-East, irrespective of all the well-meaning noises meant nothing but a minor annoyance, and remained a mythical place which the rest of India read about in Geography books, and where most of the Bengalis retreated for vacations. This made the North-East an open playground of secessionists and the Church which wanted to create some sort of Vatican Colony out of disenchanted tribal-folks of the North-East.
Unloved and ignored by the mainland, the North-East fell out of the psychological map of India. To think that the area which shares the most hostile borders did not have a broad-guage train line until last year, is enough to illustrate the story of apathy. As the tribes surrendered their distinct identities to the dead white uniformity of Church and resigned their eclectic existence to the overwhelming Red of the communism; one can truly imagine how their hearts must have bled and how they would have longed to be a part of the nation with which they shared their roots and history and respected their diversity. Sadly, as the Eastern India looked West to Delhi, Delhi continued looking West, under the overdrive of nostalgic Kashmiri and Punjabi bureaucrats and politicians stuck in pre-47 era. We as a nation offered them nothing but a royal ignore for years and decades. The region which became a part of Indraprastha by Arjun during Mahabharat, where a saddened Shiv wandered saddened by the loss of Sati, thousands of years, was left ignored by an independent India as if it was never our own.
The connectivity with the North-East was always sketchy. It took a NDA government of Vajpayee to start the process of integration. Take the case of longest in-land bridge. Project approved by NDA government of Vajpayee and completed by the NDA Government of Narendra Modi in Twenty years, even when the previous PM ran the country as a proxy of Sonia Ghandy with fake residential address of Assam. Media left the NE ignored and isolated under the excuse of tyranny of distance, since it remained tucked under the rule of Church and Communism, both loved by the Lutyen's media. After this debacle, the myopic media has set about now to find the caste-combinations and resorting to the routine punditry of theirs to explain the expulsion of left from Tripura and the failure of Church to ward of the evil Modi from the North-East. They are so blinded by their hatred for Modi that they will not be able to see the truth which stares in their eyes even if it was to slap them on their powdered cheeks.
They never reported that Narendra Modi was the first Prime Minister to visit Shilong in last Forty years, a first after Morarji Desai. The church was the East India Company for the Sonia-led Congress and the left ran their stinky citadel of mis-governance in Tripura as media hid the stories of ugly violence in the region under the pretext of tyranny of distance.
As Modi reached out to the North-East, for the first time they found both affection and attention. This win is the Ghar-waapsi of North-East. In this whole scheme of things, Modi-the man is incidental; Modi-the movement is critical.
Congress cannot understand this and I do not mind it much. At least with current leadership, I would rather they never understand where they went wrong. Having lost the East, Rahul Ghandy has gone to Italy, ostensibly to see his 94 years old grandmother. As the Darbari anchors go Aww.. they do not explain as to why Rahul could not have waited a week or so to re-energize the desperate cadres who have just lost another election before proceeding for vacations. It is as if the Mussolini-lover family was waiting with freshly-made Ghujia for the illustrious grand-son this Holi. This sudden departure to foreign lands can only be about absolute apathy or some nefarious mechanization in the face of humiliating defeat from out of country which is secret to us. Their is something viciously conspiratorial about the current Congress leadership and their routine foreign travels, always under the garb of secrecy. The workaholic zeal of PM Narendra Modi against the stupidly stop-gap approach of a jobless prince is a study in contrast. This itself leaves nothing much to be analyzed and explains wisdom in the choices made by the North East India in the recent election where Congress is decimated in two states. The only state where it is still largest party with 21 seats, it is down 7 seats from the tally it had in the last election.
Narendra Modi has transcended his physical being and represents more than the man he is. He is a concept and an idea. He connects us to our pasts which unites us as a nation. You can keep on attacking him as a person, nothing sticks and nothing matters. He for most Indians, is an idea whose time has come. An idea can only be countered by another idea, more robust, more vivid idea and Congress' slavish, muddled vision is no match for it. After North-East's Ghar-waapsi, I am only hoping that the South too throws back the sack of rice at the divisive play of Vatican and come back into the fold of Bharat. As for Communism, the idea is dead and it lives off the deads. Communism, as an ideology is so dead that they have to borrow foot-soldiers from the Jihadists. Once glorious idea has long since became a committee-run system, which created new set of absolutist elites and offered to the masses, nothing but lofty slogans. That is why Venezuela is exploding and the CM of the leftist government gets himself admitted in the a Capitalist's Corporate Hospital. When arguments are weak, violence is the only argument. That is what we saw in West Bengal, in Tripura and in Kerala. This is not a localized phenomenon. The same was observed in Russia and in China where Millions died for having a view different from the Government. It is funny that Indian leftists with ample support of conniving Press gets to project themselves as liberal guardians of free voice. China, their mother ship, has in the meantime taken steps to appoint the Communist party chief as the new Emperor. As it turns out from Mao, Stalin, XI Jinping- all dictatorial, absolutist leaders who came to power talking of power to the lowest rung, Communism is nothing but a scam. That leaves us with Modi, who is an idea whose time has come and when he beckons, you walk.
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