A Sunny way to take heat off Trump, Modi

Who is denounced and which character is a-ok depends on those in the driving seat on social media. Which would be… everybody under the sun. Just check out your various media accounts

There’s some tension hovering over my school WhatsApp group these days. I can assure you that it’s nothing serious if you are interested in hearing the rest of the story. We were fine as long as we talked petty politics and targeted politicians like Donald Trump (who else?). But it’s different now.

Before I continue, let me provide some context. The group is comprised of Indian-Americans, IndianIndians and Gulf Indians like this writer, IndianAmericans being the majority though it suits them fine to be termed desi Indians when they talk of the ‘mess back home’ after returning to the US from those memorable trips.

Class of America weighs heavy in this Class of 1991, like the caste system that is still prevalent in India, the world’s largest and secular democracy. Gulf Indians are stuck in the middle. I wonder why I get the feeling that we have a long way to go — to get to America and breathe in some real liberty. Maybe we aren’t brave enough to cry freedom like those Indian-Americans.

Meanwhile, the Indian-Americans are convinced they know how to run the United States, and how to fix an unbroken system broken by Trump and his machinations. There’s angst and hatred over what the US president espouses. He’s their favourite whipping boy for all the trouble he’s been causing over H1B visas and south of the border, down Mexico way. But there’s a great deal of comfort that Mother India is safe in Narendra Modi’s hands — a leader nonpareil, who is peerless and above board.

Early on in the group we threw some stray ideological jabs, ducked, feinted and weaved to keep the core issue away. We are global citizens now and we took pains to behave like grown-up old school boys. But that changed recently when I said Modi-Trump are two sides of the same coin, and should be viewed in the same light. In short, cut the hypocrisy.

Someone flipped the subject and diverted the conversation to one Karenjit Kaur Vohra. If you don’t know her, she’s the Canadian-American-Indian porn star-turned-Bollywood actress Sunny Leone — that paragon of reverse migration (or was it titillation?). She’s the mascot for the majority in the group, and so is former US President Barack Obama, who I maintain to this day, did not deserve the credit he gets. Then, I sound like a voice crying out in the wilderness from here to the Gulf.

Back to the duo of contention — Donald J Trump and Narendra Modi. Three years ago I supported Modi when he became PM. I still do. I like his commitment and discipline. Modi the politician has evolved and has taken the Indian growth story global while talking tough on internal security.

You’ve got to admire him for that, though I have a beef with his party and its extended branches on many fronts. They have trampled on matters of food and faith, and I won’t hesitate to call out the lunatic rightist offshoots they support. Here, the PM has been utterly unconvincing by failing to restore social order and confidence among those who did not vote for him.

Does that make me a Modi faithful (bhakt in Sanskrit)? No. The PM takes his time to respond on social media and condemn those cow lynchers and vigilantes… which I have a problem with. He believes he holds 1.2 billion people in his power of silence when he must speak up and set the moral tone.

I’m also called a Trump fanatic in the group when I support the president’s policies on migration and security that is the sovereign right of any independent country. The US president makes better copy before breakfast while Modi prefers the power of silence to push forward his agenda over some chai. With the Indian prime minister, it’s a slow burn; things move at a rapid pace in the United States with the president keeping the pot boiling and calling others, calling it black on Twitter.

I’m befuddled by the extreme positions these two gentleman evoke among the ‘liberals and secularists’ who had decided that they were doomed to fail before they took over. Trump may be headed there earlier than expected if his Russian connections are proven. But the political reality is this: the two leaders have a tryst with the majority. And intolerant liberals are falling out of favour with the masses.

Protests are swelling, report some sections of the media as the combined liberal, pseudo liberal and pseudo secular cause and narrative takes a beating with these two outsiders at the helm. In Modi’s India, the pseudo secular Congress party and disparate regional parties were ousted by the majority Hindu voters who were sick of being left out of the power process just because they were the religious group with the higher numbers. There is a consolidation of this segment of voters who believe they are taking their country back through their votes just like the White Christian majority in the US who put Trump in the White House.

That’s the core issue that I have always wanted to express in the group, but did not for fear of hurting the majority sentiment that views Trump and Modi differently, and in isolation. Modi was slow to respond to the activities of the cow vigilantes and Trump to the White supremacists. In India, they call them the fringe, nationalists or fascists while in the US, they choose to call them supremacists.

The only difference is Trump types before his thinks and all hell breaks loose while Modi keeps people on tenterhooks when he shuts up. That’s what I said the other day in the group. The majority fell silent, just like Modi. I may have crossed the saffron line here. The tension persists. Sunny, anyone?