India's Modi, Beloved and Deplored
"I feel neither that anybody sent me nor that have I come on my own."
"It is Maa Ganga [Mother Ganges] who has called me."
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
 |
| Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the oath-taking ceremony at Rahstrapati Bahvan. Twitter@BJP4India |
"He doesn't even give love to his own family, because then what is the difference between him and the rest of the politicians."In India's most recent general election, its Prime Minister, Mr. Modi, won re-election by a landslide. It was not only Hindu voters who brought Narendra Modi back to power, but a significant number of Muslim voters as well. India has a huge population of Muslims comprising an estimated 13 percent of its 1.3-billion people. India's Muslim demographic is almost equal to that of its Muslim neighbour, Pakistan. Only Indonesia has a greater percentage of the world's Muslims; India comes in third, after Pakistan.
"It should be like this, leaving everything behind for the country."
"Before Modi, it felt like Hindutva [Hindu nationalism] was dead around here."
Vijay Yadav, 30, Varanasi, India
"Stop! Does a Hindu destroy temples? Does a Hindu destroy icons?"
"He is not Hindu. He cannot be Hindu."
Swami Avimukteshwaranand, head, Sri Vidya Math, Hindi school, Varnasi
"Today, no one is ready to listen."
"If he comes back to power, he is coming with confidence."
S.M. Yasin, general secretary, local mosque association, Varanasi
 |
| Temples of Varanasi - Kashi Temples |
When Narendra Modi was governor of Gujarat, one of the country's largest states, he blended policies to speed development alongside the promotion of Hindu nationalist ideology. When conflicts broke out between Hindus and Muslims, he was criticized for not taking action to avoid the conflict at the cost of many lives. He was not known as a defender of Muslim equality, but recognized for his Hindu nationalism. And there is no mistaking the fact that he is wildly popular in India, a cult figure of huge acclaim.
His Bharatiya Janata Party is unapologetically nationalist, promoting Hinduism, ignoring the Islamic quotient of the nation's character. But as the world's largest democracy, the state promotes its version of equality between all of its people, majority Hindu and minority Muslim, Christian, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists and Zoroastrians.
When Mr. Modi decided to realize his ambition to lead India he chose as his constituency a city of temples and gods located on the banks of the sacred Ganges River, the city of Varanasi. And it was from that stage that he was re-elected on May 23, his margin of victory close to a half million votes. He was previously the longest serving chief minister of Gujarat.
Prime Minister Modi is so admired by his followers a temple in his name with a statue of him has been built in the city. Not all in Varanasi, however, view him with affection. When he decided to build a corridor from the Kashi Vishwanath temple to the Ganges River it required that hundreds of families were to be moved, their homes razed, homes of both Hindus and Muslims, which brought him no little amount of resentment.
In the process Hindu leaders complained of the smaller temples that were destroyed in the prosection of the project. As for Muslim leaders, the Vishanath temple shares a wall with a local mosque and its leaders fear that the temple's expansion will cost them their mosque. Swami Avimukteshwarenand of the Varanasi Hindu school is livid with rage over the building of the Vishwanath corridor. He compares it to Muslim emperors smashing Hindu icons, insisting no true HIndu would destroy temples.
According to the general secretary of the local mosque association, encroachment of the mosque grounds caused such anger that bloody clashes were only just averted. Hindus and Mulims had lived peacefully for a long time in Varanasi, he stated, but that trust had been broken by Mr. Modi's government. Not so, claims Mr. Modi's young devotee, Vijay Yadav for whom the prime minister's dedication and ready connection with people is so appealing to him and others like him.
 |
Labels: India, Narendra Modi, Varanasi
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, June 04, 2019
<< Home