Two events held on the same day, 22 September, confused India-watchers. At ‘Howdy Modi’, a gigantic political extravaganza in Houston, more than 50,000 ‘Am-Indians’ kept cheering Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump. India appeared like a super power strutting on the global stage! Modi sold an America-sized India!
The India projected in a meeting in Bangalore was very different, afflicted with social degradation, faux nationalism, mob lynching, rising religious intolerance and falling economic growth. The speaker presenting this negative analysis was noted TV journalist Ravish Kumar, the occasion his receipt of the first Gauri Lankesh Memorial Award, in memory of the activist and journalist who was murdered in 2017. He cautioned the young Indians that bigotry they were learning in WhatsApp University would destroy their future. The audience nodded in agreement.
Hundreds of millions of Indians who have given two overwhelming electoral victories to Modi do not share Kumar’s grim assessment. Most Indians have not read the Forbes article that advises Modi to remain in India and fix its economy instead of travelling abroad to tell foreigners how well his country is doing. Nevertheless many Indians, including intellectuals and creative persons, agree with Kumar, who is trolled by Modi’s army of volunteers and the BJP employees dominating social media. There are any number of academics, writers, artists, ordinary concerned citizens and retired civil servants expressing anxiety about the direction that India has taken.
