You started your interview by saying that you are going to have an apolitical interview. You have every right to do that. You can ask every stupid question under the sky – pattern of eating mangoes, bank balance, process of dealing with cold, wish from djinn of Aladdin’s lamp, sleep hours, desire for becoming PM, anger management, valuable things held by PM inside the house, pattern of styling, style of wearing watch and sleep hours.
But contrary to what you said, you are only playing politics. Through your interview you only wanted to convey the message to the people for them to turn away from the reality and see an apolitical Modi. You wanted to convey – Let things be what it is. Let things happen the way it happens. Let us not worry about issues – Jobs, Unemployment, Poverty, Demonetisation, GST, Rafael, Corruption, Women safety, Lynching’s, Communalisation, etc. Let us forget that there are elections and there are issues to think and bother about. Let us forget that the Prime Minister is to be questioned on these fronts. Let us just see the personal life of the Prime Minister, away from the Political life.
It is true that you are not one of those who has been affected by the policies of the Prime Minister. Whether it is Demonetisation, GST, Lynching’s, intolerance and growing communal environment. But if you are sensitive enough to your own industry, you would have realised that even the well-established popular and respected actors in your own industry are feeling at the environment that has grown in the last 5 years – whether it is Amir Khan, Shahrukh Khan or Nasiruddin Shah. If their situation is like that, imagine the situation of normal minorities. You could have at-least asked the Prime Minister about the growing sense of insecurity among the Minorities in the country taking a cue from your own industry.
You rather seemed to display the Bhakt in you and use your celebrity status to strengthen and continue the Bhakt narrative around the Prime Minister. You wanted to show the Prime Minister as a simple humble and saintly person – as a person from poor family who struggled even to buy mangoes, a simple person who wanted to become a saint or sainik, someone who sleeps less or works hard, someone who left family for doing something great for the nation. You also wanted to show how the Prime Minister controls his anger, is friendly towards opponents, and treats his subordinates. However, the things said by the Prime Minister goes against the points he made. His personal attacks against the political opponents, his encouragement of hatred against the political opponents through following trollers, encouragement of lynching’s through lack of action on offenders, encouragement of terrorism through providing electoral space to Pragya Sadvhvi, narcistic personality and concentration of powers display a completely different thing.
So contrary to what you said, you were only doing a political interview. You were playing a hide and seek game. You were hiding the burning issues bothering the citizens of the country – Jobs, Unemployment, Lynching’s, Demonetisation, Rafael. On the other hand you were seeking to explore aspects of Prime Ministers personal life which makes little sense to Public life. His style of eating mangoes, way of dealing with cold, sleeping lesser number of hours, style of wearing watch – means little for the people.
By an Indian Citizen
Courtesy: Counter Current