“The people of India must decide whether their Prime Minister is paradoxical or plain absurd,” remarked BJP MP and former Union Minister Shatrughan Sinha on Monday. He was speaking at the launch of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s book, ‘The Paradoxical Prime Minister’ at the YMCA library Hall in Thiruvananthapuram.
Speaking about his book, Tharoor said that there is a section in the book about ‘Moditva’, which is a combination of “Hindutva plus Modi”. “Ever since Veer Savarkar, an ideologue of the RSS, coined the term Hindutva in 1925, the RSS has been trying to transform India into a Hindu nation.” Tharoor went on to add that Modi gains inspiration from the idea of Hindutva. “In 2007, Modi had named 16 of his heroes, and all 16 of them were members of the RSS,” Tharoor said.
“Moditva is a concept which explains that Modi is not just any RSS man, but he also brings in his own identity —- his modern sensibilities, hi-tech familiarity, pictures with world leaders and so on,” said Tharoor.
With a smile, Tharoor added that the book begins with the words, “I told you so” and goes on to say that in 2015, when he wrote his book, ‘India Shastra’, a critique of Narendra Modi’s first six months in power, he had written that “while Modi made liberal announcements like ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’, he was depending on the support of the most illiberal elements of the Indian society”.
“The next four years the Prime Minister has spent proving me right,” he added.
According to Tharoor, another section of the book also deals with the “Modi-fication” of India. “In this, I have written about the atrocities committed in the name of cow protection. Statistics from the Ministry of Home Affairs says that since independence, out of all the communal violence caused due to the issue of cow protection, 97% of them took place after the Modi government came to power,” he said.
Actor-turned-politician and BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha, known for his strong criticism against the Modi government’s decisions such as demonetisation and the implementation of the Goods and Service Tax (GST), criticised PM Narendra Modi at the event and referred to demonetisation as a “Tughlaqian decision”.
“Modi should have thought about the daily wage labourers, small traders, farmers and even the tea sellers, who he claims he used to be before he announced the note ban,” stated Sinha.
The BJP MP during his speech also emphasised that he had no personal hatred against Narendra Modi but what he was against was the functioning as a “one-man show and the two man army” - a reference made regarding the decisions taken by the Prime Minister and the Modi-Amit Shah combination.
“This book is not merely a criticism of the Prime Minister. I didn’t want to write a 500 page book just for that,” quipped Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, leaving the audience in splits.
Also present at the book launch were former Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, current Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala, Thiruvananthapuram MLA VS Sivakumar and Lok Sabha MP PK Kunhalikutty.