The procession of pyres in India doesn’t surprise me. When Israel, Canada, Germany and China were engaged in producing Oxygen, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was busy in trying to alter history by changing names of places and cities. To saffronise the heart of India, Modi disowned 200 million Muslims with his Citizenship Act.
With a childhood similar to that of Hitler and Stalin, Modi has all the sadistic tendencies of a fascist and who tries to hide his mismanagment by using Pakistan as a scarecrow. Compared to the previous premiership of Dr Manmohan Singh and his economic reforms, personality, humanity and enlightenment, Modi has proven that he is nothing but an 18th century panchayat leader from Gujrat, mistakenly placed on the Iron Throne of New Delhi.
He is fast becoming a symbol of death and misery in Covid-striken India as well as Bangladesh where 17 young people were shot dead during his recent visit. Governance is a highly skilled job. Countries like Israel, Canada, Germany and China elect professional managers as their heads of state or government. It’s only South Asia where power can be claimed by a tea maker, black-money maker or on the basis of inheritance.
So, people die here of mismanagement, hunger and lack of oxygen. Many a Milton, Shakespeare, Frost, Kafka and Camus lie unexplored in graveyards or their ashes scattered across the earth. They die unknown deaths in South Asia, where guardian angels fly no more, where even pyres burn to death.