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PM Modi Should Remember Why Satyameva Jayate is the National Motto

Modi didn’t mind telling lies about likes of Rajiv Gandhi, who could not defend themselves because they were dead.

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As I begin writing about how Prime Minister Narendra Modi has, in public perception, become the congenital liar that he is, I find the task the easiest. This is because I do not have much to do except to list the lies he uttered, deliberately or otherwise, over the last five years that he has held the highest political post in the country.

In fact, a friend has sent me a link to a story that lists every falsehood that he gave expression to as the prime minister.

What I cannot understand is why he had to stoop so low when everything was going great for him. He became the chief minister of Gujarat and, then, the prime minister of India, not because someone chose him for the posts but because he made the choice inevitable. In 2014, the BJP had no option but to make him the prime ministerial candidate.

Modi cleverly managed to transform himself as an exponent of development at a time when his political rivals called him ‘Maut ka Saudagar’ (Messenger of Death). Many saw him as the man of India’s destiny who would put the nation on the fast track of development. It is a different matter that this time he did not say a word about development.

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Instead, he did not even mind telling lies about persons like Rajiv Gandhi, who could not defend themselves because they were dead and gone.

Was there any need for Modi to stoop so low in public life? His party colleague and one-time boss R Balashankar had written a timely book “Narendra Modi: Creative Disruptor: The Maker of New India” (Konark) that lists all his real and imaginary achievements. All he needed to do was to harp on each of the points the author made to convince the voters that he had not forsaken development.

Instead, he resorted to falsehood, earning the unforgettable epithet, ‘King Liar’.

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Satyameva Jayate Only a Maxim?

On December 25 last, he used his Twitter handle to pay tributes to two great sons of India, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who shared the same birthday, celebrated all over the world as Christmas.

One of his first acts as PM was to confer the title of Bharat Ratna on both. He also named an ultramodern train that runs between Delhi and Varanasi as Mahamana Express. The title Mahamana was conferred on Malaviya by the Mahatma himself.

It was Malaviya who founded the Benares Hindu University, rescued the Hindustan Times from penury and held the post of President of the Indian National Congress four times, and who popularised the slogan ‘Satyameva Jayate’ (Truth alone triumphs). It is part of a mantra from the Mundaka Upanishad. Malaviya was fond of reciting the mantra and, thereby, made it popular.

When India became a Republic in 1950, Satyameva Jayate was chosen as the national motto. It is inscribed in the script at the base of the national emblem which is an adaptation of the Lion Capital of Ashoka. The emblem and the words are inscribed on one side of all Indian currency notes – including the ones demonetised by Modi.

Early this week, I visited Mumbai where at the statue of Dr BR Ambedkar, near the Gateway of India, I saw a metallic image of the first page of the Indian Constitution which has Satyameva Jayate written clearly under the national emblem. The national motto is also literally written in stone at the entrance to Parliament. If anything, this shows how important truth-telling is to the nation.

This did not begin with Independence or Malaviya.

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Remembering ‘Satyavadi Harishchandra’

It is not for no reason that Mahatma Gandhi called his autobiography “The Story of My Experiments with Truth”. Long before the BJP candidate in Bhopal, Pragya Singh Thakur, praised Nathuram Vinayak Godse, a magazine edited by Godse himself had published a cartoon that showed Mahatma Gandhi as Ravan with 10 heads.

The cartoon showed someone aiming an arrow at Gandhi. Each of the 10 heads was identifiable. One of them was that of Sardar Patel, another that of Nehru and yet another that of Netaji Bose. Had Godse and Co. been allowed to have their way, they would have killed not just Gandhi but also everyone who struggled for India’s independence.

However, even Gandhi’s worst detractors like Godse and Pragya would not be able to accuse him of saying lies. Even when Gandhi slept with naked women as part of his weird experiments, he did not lie. Nor did he keep the room locked from inside. His life was like an open book anyone could read at his own pace.

Dadasaheb Phalke is considered the father of Indian cinema. When he thought of producing India’s first movie in the early part of the 20th century, he had the option of choosing any story from any texts, including the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Finally, he chose the story of Raja Harishchandra that finds a mention in several Hindu texts. Why did he choose the story of this King, instead of, say, King Dasaratha or the more colourful Krishna?

No legendary character underwent such trauma as Harishchandra. He was a great King who had to forsake everything, including his Kingdom, his subjects, his wife and son and, finally himself, to uphold the truth and the word he gave to the sage Vishwamitra. He became the slave of a low-caste person and his duty was to guard a cremation ground and take money for conducting cremations.

When his wife brings his own son for cremation, he does not make an exception and asks for money. He does this knowing full well that she does not have money. In doing so, he passes the ultimate test. In the sacred texts of the Hindus, Harishchandra is the only person who finds a place for himself in Heaven and who does not have to experience the cycles of birth.

Two stories that appealed to Mahatma Gandhi are that of Harishchandra and Prahlada. Both undergo the severest tests of endurance but they come out triumphantly.

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The Scripted Lie

In the case of Prahlada, he is thrown away from a mountain by his own father but he keeps muttering God’s name. Both never forsook the truth. Small wonder that ‘Truth’ became Gandhi’s leitmotif. Why did Modi have to resort to falsehood? That is something which nobody has ever been able to understand.

Luckily for Modi, the Constitution does not say that the prime minister should be a graduate. It does not even say that he should be literate. He should have attained a certain age and he should be sound, both physically and mentally. That is all. With a 56-inch chest, he is eminently qualified to hold the post.

K Kamaraj was one of the most successful chief ministers of the country. He was a kingmaker. Nobody made fun of the fact that he was not very well-educated. Similarly, nobody would have made fun of Modi if he had not claimed that he was a graduate. Did it matter whether he had a BA degree from Delhi University or not? If he wanted, he could have got a dozen or more honorary doctorates.

Similarly, there was no need to tell the world that he was a master of digital technology and had taken a picture of LK Advani with a digital camera and “transmitted” it to a newspaper in Delhi in 1987-88. Did it really matter whether he started using email when people of his generation were still using postcards?

Modi was interviewed the other day, and was asked a question whether he still wrote poems. His answer was that he had written one recently. He asked an aide to bring the poem. It was duly brought. The camera focused on it. On the top was written Question No. — and the question.

The question was exactly the one the interviewer had asked. It exposed the fact that the whole interview was arranged from the beginning to the end. That is why, for the most important interview he granted during the campaign, he chose a film actor, rather than a journalist. The film actor turned out to be a Canadian citizen.

I, as a journalist, would have been happier if Modi had given the interview to a journalist from Motherland or Panchjanya than to an actor who is good only at mouthing the script, rather than asking probing questions. A journalist, whatever be his political inclination, would, at the end of the day, be a muck-raker, rather than a publicist like Akshay Kumar.

For once, the people understood why Modi never addressed a press conference during his tenure as prime minister. Even the little doubt that they had was removed when he met the press in the company of Amit Shah on the last day of the campaign.

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What PM Modi can Learn From Polonius

He is more comfortable reading out texts as he did in his Mann ki Baat. For a national leader, nothing is more important than his credibility. When the people know that they have a leader who has two dates of birth, who claims sometimes to be a bachelor and at other times to be householder, who claims to have a degree which no one in the world has, who claims to have sold tea which nobody has bought from him and whose dates of various accomplishments raise more questions than answers, they lose faith in him.

Modi is not the only one to face political challenges. One of the greatest leaders of the world was Abraham Lincoln. No man in American history had been so hated and reviled, so bitterly denounced, as he had been during the first term of his Presidency. One newspaper had called him “the obscene ape of Illinois”.

Lincoln had not expected re-election, although, he wanted it to complete his task of unification. As he addressed the nation on his re-election, he harboured no resentments, did not have the slightest wish for retaliation against those who had cruelly slandered and abused him. He had one interest only: to conciliate the rebellious states and to rebuild the Union he had sworn to preserve. He had no use for lies.

The great President concluded his speech:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Khushwant Singh paraphrased Lincoln’s words “With malice toward none” while introducing his weekly column in the Illustrated Weekly of India. Lincoln will always be remembered for this speech which virtually transformed him into a Philosopher President. In contrast, how will the world remember Modi?

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Earlier in the column, I alluded to Shakespeare’s King Lear, a tragic character who was more sinned against than sinning. Hamlet is another of his greatest plays. Hamlet was a character Shakespeare resurrected from legends and chronicles, a young man of complex but noble character. He wanted to give him soul and feeling; set him among his contemporaries and let him come to life.

In the play, there is a character Laertes, who is taking leave of his father Polonius. There is a short passage in which the father advises his son on statecraft. The father’s precepts to his son are so wise and penetrating that even when taken from the context of the play they stand by themselves, vital and complete.

“This above all: to thine own self be true”. There are few more important injunctions in the world, few with deeper significance for the individual than this command. “Look to your character”, Polonius continues to urge his son. “Be honest, moderate, sincere”.

But for a miracle, Modi is set to lose his post. He will do well to read Laertes’ advice to his son to understand why he lost the battle for the Indian mind and why he will long be remembered as King Liar.

( AJ Philip is a senior journalist and columnist and has held editorial posts in The Tribune, the Indian Express and the Hindustan Times. This article was first published on www.indiancurrents.org and has been re-published with the author’s permission. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

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