The prime minister's insistence that his voice cannot be suppressed left me both puzzled and amused.
He has at his call, the government's official news dissemination/publicity channels, the pliant newspapers and television channels that were eager to prostrate themselves before a powerful government and yet, the dominant voice thinks it is in competition with other voices! exclaims Shyam G Menon.
Bingeing is no longer associated with just drinking.
The most common bingeing nowadays centers around that emergent plenty of our times -- media. COVID-19 and the lockdown, which followed, made bingeing on media more popular than before.
One side effect of bingeing on media, ranging from news to films and music, is a brain that is active with voices within, even in the most silent of worlds.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's promise in his reply to the Motion of Thanks to the President's Address in the Rajya Sabha that his voice cannot be suppressed reminded me of mind binged on media in world otherwise silent.
The best way in which, this may be explained would be to study the contrast between 2024, the year wherein the National Democratic Alliance, as per Modi's words, targets more than 400 seats in Parliament via general elections expected in April-May and the last time 400 plus was obtained by a single party in the Lok Sabha -- the seats the Congress won in the 1984 elections following former prime minister Indira Gandhi's assassination.
That time, the BJP had won a mere two seats. The Congress is now nowhere near what it used to be; it is a shadow of its former self. But so is the country as regards the right to expression if 2024 and 1984 are compared.
In the years following the Emergency of 1975-1977, the country and its sentinel organisations were zealous guardians of democracy and freedom of expression.
Until 2014 and the first Modi government, when signs of a return to autocracy started to manifest.
By the second term of the said regime, curbs on free speech and criticism, accompanied by harassment of critics and Right Wing-infiltration of sentinel agencies, were clearly the order of the day.
Today, few speak up without looking over their shoulder.
Amidst this, only one chorus of voices has droned unchallenged -- that of the BJP's apex leadership, courtesy captive news agencies, pliant private media outfits and legions of cult followers willing to echo what Modi says.
Outside of this, India's political noise stood largely ignored and therefore, substantially subdued.
It has been a relatively silent, political world with the right of far-reaching vision exclusive domain of one party.
A world in which only the voice of the leader and his cohorts, drone on and on.
From India's GDP and superpower-future to finding peace in Ukraine and Israel to how our students should tackle their exams -- he has held forth on everything under the sun.
Consequently, the prime minister's insistence that his voice cannot be suppressed left me both puzzled and amused.
He has at his call, the government's official news dissemination/publicity channels spanning radio and television, the pliant newspapers and television channels that were eager to prostrate themselves before a powerful government -- all of them together called fondly by critics as the godi media -- and yet, the dominant voice thinks it is in competition with other voices!
Where are the other voices, except the only voice and political theme that goes round and round in India's media-binged head? Well maybe, the silence of a world gagged into compliance, can be unnerving to those used to unending chatter about themselves 24x7.
What else can one say if Modi with all the avenues for self-amplification already at his disposal, emphasises that his voice won't be suppressed?
Where has there been suppression of his voice since 2014?
The claim of being a voice beyond suppression wasn't the only memorable aspect from that Rajya Sabha speech, reported in the media.
A gentleman called Jawaharlal Nehru, who belongs to my great grandfather's generation appeared to still haunt the Prime Minister despite so much of communications arsenal at the latter's disposal.
It's a bit like President Joe Biden blaming his predecessors Franklin Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower for what is currently going wrong in the US. Or I blaming my great grandfather and grandfather for my life, screwed up at my own hands.
The simple thing Modi and the BJP need to understand is that many of us in the Indian electorate lack the luxury of blaming our ancestors for what has gone wrong. Do so; waste time so and we miss our berth in the rat race-present.
So, what's the point in a contemporary Indian politician, who is seeking our votes, faulting Nehru for everything gone wrong in India?
What it actually tells me is just the opposite -- that these folks avowed to criticising anything pre-BJP and non-RSS as inapt for India, envy the very people they love to loathe and therefore cannot stop highlighting Nehru's claimed mistakes for fear that they don't measure up to the charisma and vision of the collective leadership, which won India her independence.
I can think of no other reason why even after a decade in power spent unbuilding and rebuilding India as per the Right Wing's agenda (with majoritarianism to boot), in the prime minister's address in the Rajya Sabha before the 2024 general elections, Nehru returned to haunt -- or found resurrection in -- Modi's sentences.
I thought by now at least, our rulers saw themselves to be as big as Nehru and all the other founding personalities of India that is Bharat.
Appears I was wrong. Perhaps another term in power will accomplish the required dose of exorcism to silence the ghosts of the past.
In any case, there is no shortage of appetite for rituals in the present regime, for said type of cure.
Some more prostration to relics from the past, another fistful of tradition, ritualistic religion, heritage mongering and celebration of Right-Wing icons should do the trick.
The more one binges on it, the less one hears anything else and the more one imagines being suppressed despite the indulgence of one's own excesses.
Shyam G Menon is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.
Disclaimer: These are Shyam G Menon's personal views.
Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com
