Why PM Modi's Monday morning I-Day speech was vulgar

When I wrote in my Facebook post in the morning while listening to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort on Monday morning that it was vulgar many wanted to know what was vulgar about it. Well, it was vulgar in the common sense meaning of the word when he boasted that the Indian tricolour was flying in every corner of the world because Indians were everywhere and there are many people who love India and therefore hold aloft the Indian tricolour. This is vanity and there can be nothing more vulgar than vanity. Indian expatriates in different parts of the world did not go there as adventurers, as explorers, as conquerors or as evangelists. They are there in all the corners of the world because they went out on their own, or there were forced to go, to do jobs. Thankfully, Indians who went out looking for jobs are indeed doing well, and they are sending money home. And they are also flying the Indian flag. Patriotism does not mean that you boast about your country in sense of waving the flag. So, that is vulgar.

The other part of vulgarity in Mr Modi's Red Fort speech is lack of discrimination. You do not bracket all people together. By doing so, you are insulting them. Calling Dr B.R.Ambedkar a freedom fighter is an insult because that is something he never claimed for himself, and he had huge differences with people who were fighting for political freedom from the British. Dr Ambedkar was a great patriot. He worked hard for the uplift of the Depressed Classes in India, he thought hard about India's economic issues, and believed in the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. So, dumping Dr Ambedkar with freedom fighters is vulgar. Secondly, it is vulgar to mention Veer Savarkar along with Mahatma Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose. Mr Modi and his ideological camp might hero-worship, but Savarkar was not a freedom fighter in the sense that he never participated in the debates and movements to overthrow British rule, which was the aim of the humblest freedom fighter. Savarkar was busy dealing with the issue of nationhood, and more particularly Hindu nationhood. He is a patriot in the sense that he loved India, but he did not see the evil the political subjugation of India. Like other Hindu right-wingers he was bust sorting out Hindus' subjugation. The best way of respecting Savarkar is not to call him a freedom fighter. Mr Modi wants to surreptitiously refashion the pantheon of Indian freedom fighters by casually mentioning the names of Savarkar, Syama Prasad Mookerji, Deen Dayal Upadhyay and Nanaji Deshmukh. It is intellectual cowardice and therefore it is vulgar. There are patriots who love India and there are freedom fighters who were clear in their mind that political subjugation of Indians is unacceptable. The Hindu right-wingers, including Mr Modi, have no idea of political freedom, of democracy.

The third vulgar aspect of the prime minister's Independence Day speech was his claim that the world is looking to India, and it is waiting for India's bounty, that India should become self-reliant or atmanirbhar so as to sustain the world. This is delusion at its best and the prime minister cannot be faulted. On Doordarshan on Monday morning, India's strategic experts were waxing eloquent about how India has turned the tables on China and America, and how the world is eating out of India's hands. The experts and the prime minister seem to be sitting in the same echo chamber.

The 75th Year of India's Independence is solemn occasion and Prime Minister Modi's speech lacked solemnity. It was the time to acknowledge that India's democracy is based on the Western values of individual dignity and individual freedom, and how it is important for India and Indians to uphold freedom not to make India a superpower but as an ideal worth pursuing because there is no greater ideal than freedom. And that was the underlying principle of India's freedom movement, and the man who understood the idea the best was Dr Ambedkar. That is why, he declared that liberty, equality and fraternity are the ideals that India must adhere to.

India wanted to hear the reaffirmation of the value of freedom in the prime minister's speech but what he delivered was a mishmash of goals of national achievement. And it did not matter whether Indians valued freedom or not. The prime minister never thought on these issues, and his ideological mentors in the RSS and the BJP never valued freedom. National glory is nothing if there is no freedom India. It did not matter India was a poor and undeveloped country and it took decades to overcome many of the hurdles, but India did it because India was a free country. Prime Minister Modi missed the point. He indulged in vainglorious talk. And that is indeed vulgar.