Columns

• Modi loses his iron grip on India and will have to modify his strongman style of governing to suit changing times

No man has done it thrice, except India’s freedom-winning first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Today, as Narendra Modi stands poised to step into Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s great-grandfather’s chappals and enter the Hall of Fame, gone will be his charismatic self-confidence which he suavely wore as his shawl around his neck. Gone, too, will be his ‘400 seat’ dream of becoming the undisputed ruler of all India. He may have won the election battle but had failed to realise his elusive dream.

The magic that had swept him to power ten years ago, and worked even more potently five years ago to grant him 300 Parliamentary seats to govern with a commanding majority, seems to have deserted him at the wanted hour, leaving him to run on his own dwindling past steam which has forced him to find solace in his party, the BJP, bagging a measly 240 seats, only narrowly scraping past the 272 simple majority seats mark with the help of its alliances’ 52 seat haul in a Parliament of 543 seats.

The Congress-led alliance INDIA, which stands for the India National Development Inclusive Alliance, did remarkably well to gain a total of 233 seats to narrow Modi’s National Democratic ‘Alliance’s margin of victory. The impressive comeback of Rahul Gandhi’s Congress Party sealed Modi’s hopes of securing a massive win for his Barathiya Janatha Party which would have made him India’s invincible monarch since independence in 1947.

Instead, today, he is reduced to horse dealing with smaller party chiefs at the political bazar–where each has his bargaining price–attempting to covet their support to form the next government with more than a respectable, comfortable and working majority than he presently has.

MEDITATING MODI: After polls closed, Modi goes to Kanyakumari for a 45-hour meditation exercise at the famed mid-sea Vivekananda Rock Memorial in Tamil Nadu

Not all the fancy garbs he donned on various occasions to show him in diverse lights, succeeded in touching grassroot electors in rural India as final poll results revealed. Nor did the communal card work.

As Indian commentators expressed: “Barely four months after the consecration of the Ram temple–among the BJP’s key ideological projects and one of its biggest calling cards this election–the party lost the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat of which Ayodhya is a part. Even for an election that defied all exit polls predictions and saw the BJP falling well short of its own goal of 370 seats, the loss in Ayodhya was particularly stark.”

Built on the very site believed to be Rama’s birthplace, a Mogul-era mosque had stood for well over 400 years until Hindu activists destroyed the ancient mosque in 1992. Amidst communal tensions, each party had filed action claiming it as their own. Finally, in 2019, the Supreme Court of India entrusted the site exclusively to Hindus. With the court clearing the legal hurdles, Prime Minister Modi attended the groundbreaking religious ceremony in August 2022.

The newly built temple was inaugurated on January 24 this year by Modi amidst a massive gathering of Bollywood celebrities, politicians, foreign dignitaries and thousands of devotees. The resurrection of the temple was showcased as the testament in timber and stone as the reaffirmation of Hindu supremacy in India. But at the elections, it failed to impress the voters. Thousands thronged to worship Rama but failed to vote for Modi’s BJP.

It might signal the dawn of a more enlightened era in the South Asian region where secularism triumphs over religious bigotry which unscrupulous politicians have long exploited to come to power in India as well as in Sri Lanka’

The dramatic comeback of Rahul Gandhi-led Congress party, and its INDIA alliance, to pose a serious threat to Modi’s parliamentary survival, signifies the resurgence of a historic party thought to have faded under Rahul’s much-criticised leadership. Touched by the valiant efforts Rahul had made, fighting against all odds to re-emerge as a force to be reckoned with, his sister Priyanka tweeted on ‘X’:

SIBLING LOVE: Rahul hugs elder and only sister Priyanka last year while after the polls results on Wednesday, she hugged Rahul and tweeted on X, ‘I am so proud to be your sister’

“You kept standing, no matter what they said and did to you…you never backed down whatever the odds, never stopped believing however much they doubted your conviction, you never stopped fighting for the truth despite the overwhelming propaganda of lies they spread, and you never allowed anger and hatred to overcome you, even when they gifted it to you every day. You fought with love, truth and kindness in your heart. Those who could not see you, see you now but some of us have always seen and know you to be the bravest of all. I am proud to be your sister.”

A touchingly poignant though inspiring message from a sister to her brother who had just been defeated from becoming the next Prime Minister of India. But for Rahul Gandhi, this message would have priceless than all the congratulatory messages that Modi had received from foreign Heads of State, including the one from Sri Lankan President, put together.

Some of the congratulatory messages may have even appeared in Modi’s eyes as messages of commiserations for his party, the BJP’s failure to bag over 300 hundred seats, as exit polls had predicted, which would have made the BJP the sole majority party in Parliament and Modi the autocrat that India would hate in time to come.

Unbeknown to Modi, these were blessings that had come in disguise. The sheen hadn’t been taken from his outstanding victory to have been elected for a record third term, though with a much lower number of seats than expected. As absolute power corrupts absolutely, the multitude of gods in the Hindu pantheon collectively answered his ambitious prayers by granting him not a surfeit of power but the bare minimum necessary to wield power on a short leash for a third spell.

Else Modi was bound to become an arrogant, despised dictator not only of the world’s most populace democracy, his native India, but also of its close neighbours in the South Asian region.

The man, who brought India nearer to superpower status, was due to be sworn-in for the third time to the office of Prime Minister on Saturday morn with Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe amongst world Heads of State in attendance.

No doubt, the President will convey the heartiest congratulations from the Lankan people who owe a deep debt of gratitude to Modi. For, if not for him and his government coming to Sri Lanka’s rescue during the days of bankruptcy when all other countries had deserted her, with a 4 billion dollar emergency credit lifeline, there would have been no fuel queues, no shortages of essential items, no shortages of vital medicines, no power cuts to complain of but, with Treasury coffers starkly bare, we would have been rendered a starving, immobile, dying people, living in absolute darkness.

This would have been our fate had not India come to our rescue. Whether India under Modi had any ulterior motive or not in saving Lanka in her bleakest hour, to meet any challenge posed to sovereignty, we first had to survive, we first had to remain alive. The least we, the people, can do is to convey the nation’s best wishes to Modi as he embarks on another term of office.

JVP’s Hadunnetti brands Elon Musk an ‘economic assassin’ Shoots his mouth first and apologises after Elon Musk’s space-busting Starlink is set to shine in Lankan skies within six months. A casual chat over breakfast in Bali between President Ranil Wickremesinghe and billionaire Elon Musk has led to millions of Lankan phone users getting the opportunity to link direct to his constellation of over 6000 mini-satellites revolving around Earth in low orbit. A week later, on May 27, Starlink began accepting fully refundable subscriptions of 9 dollies each to access the internet, pending formal approval. On Thursday the Presidential Media Division issued a press statement that the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) has granted preliminary approval for ‘Starlink’ to provide satellite-based internet services in Lanka. HADUNNETTI: JVP’s economic team’s leader State Minister Kanaka Herath emphasised, a two-week period has been allocated for a formal public consultation process regarding approval. Following this period, the TRCSL will take steps to implement the service in Sri Lanka. While millions of phone users anxiously awaited from day one the Bali announcement to link up to Starlink, an immediate protest was lodged against Elon Musk’s Starlink coming to Sri Lanka. On May 31st, addressing a JVP rally in Badulla and shown on social media the night, JVP’s Sunil Hadunnetti branded Elon Musk as an economic assassin. He said: “We don’t need fellows like economic assassin Elon Musk.” Minister Manusha Nanayakkara lambasted Hadunnetti the following day for describing Musk as an economic assassin. He said: “Elon Musk is the number one billionaire in the world. Tesla, SpaceX, eBay, Bitcoin and Starlink Satellite are all under his leadership. He changed the world economy and propelled technology forward. When someone like Musk comes to Sri Lanka, the country’s technology will be integrated with the world. With the connection to the Starlink satellite, you can work from anywhere with internet access. We should be happy about this.” Hadunnetti’s diatribe against Musk may have outraged even the most diehard JVP supporters who use mobile phones. For the following day, he appeared on TV and made a grovelling apology to Elon Musk. He said: “Yesterday in Badulla, I said that Ranil had invited Elon Musk to Lanka. I referred to Elon Musk as a ‘fellow’ and also as an economic assassin. Apparently, I had made a big mistake. Today one of our IT experts, YouTube channel comrades corrected me as to who Elon Musk really is. I humbly beg Elon Musk’s pardon if I’d hurt him in any way.” Manusha Nanayakkara reacted to this craven ‘sorry’ from Hadunnetti. He said: “He doesn’t even know who Elon Musk is. If he had gone to the internet or even asked a small boy at home, he could have told him who Elon Musk really is.” As JVP-NPP leader Anura Kumara said a cursory sorry for JVP mass killings during the 88-89 period to a local expat audience in Canada, shooting first and saying sorry later, seems to be the new convenient JVP mode of seeking absolution without true repentance. Sunil Hadunnetti is the man the JVP projects as its finance minister. He is also the leader of its economic team who didn’t even know that Elon Musk produces the Tesla electric car until a YouTube channel told him on June 1st. With an economic tyro leading JVP’s economic team, no wonder they had repeatedly avoided meeting the SJB’s economic team—headed by Dr. Harsha de Silva –for the much-publicised TV debate.  The JVP had declared that a debate between the two leaders was sufficient. That to hold any other was a ‘vikarayak’ or nonsense. The SJB had insisted that an economic debate was of paramount importance since it was the burning issue in the country today. They held the people had a right to know what each side’s economic solution was to emerge from the crisis. It was both the leaders’ debate and the economic debate or none at all. With answers not forthcoming from the JVP, the whole farce was called off. ITN invited the two leaders to hold their debate on their channel. The SJB ignored the invite since it didn’t meet its ‘two debate’ condition. Instead, JVP-NPP leader Anura Kumara turned up alone at the ITN studios on Thursday night to play Hamlet without the Prince. Padman has last laugh over sanitary towels At the last presidential election, Sajith Premadasa promised to give sanitary towels to menstruating girls and women free every month, stressing the need of the government to provide proper health care. For making this proposal benefiting millions of destitute women scarcely able to afford the cost of food on the table, let alone sanitary towels, he was lampooned, ridiculed and mocked on social media by politicians of all hues, They even had a name for him: Padman. SAJITH: Proposed in 2019 SUSIL: Implements now Five years later the government has embarked on a scheme to distribute free vouchers to schoolgirls to buy sanitary towels.  Education Minister Susil Premajayantha who inaugurated the project on Thursday at Nawala’s President Girls’ College declared, that a billion rupees had been allocated to this programme. Beginning this month every schoolgirl will receive a gift voucher worth Rs.1200 through their schools for over six months to buy sanitary towels. These vouchers can be used to purchase sanitary pads from shops registered with the Education Ministry. Students are responsible for ensuring that the sanitary pads they purchase are certified as hygienic by the Sri Lanka Standards Institute. Given the number of schoolgirls who stay at home during their monthly periods, the minister announced, the Government intends to create a more inclusive and supportive environment Very good. Evidently, the then opposition which scoffed at first has now begun to act. Yet better late than never though it took five years in the making It abundantly shows how a sound proposal intrinsically good for the people must be implemented, no matter who proposed it first.