None Of Our Business
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here are five different
manners in which the RTI application from Jashodaben Modi, estranged wife of
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, wanting to be assured of her safety, can be
viewed: hypothetically, liberally, spiritually, historically and factually.
None of the ways, as readers will see through this article, justifies the
sudden advocacy by ‘social liberals’ (read detractors of Modi) that the prime
minister must either accept Jashodaben in his family fold or divorce her — one
of the two, normally accepted social conventions for partners in a couple.
Hypothesis
No way is Jashodaben in a
position comparable to that of Indira Gandhi who had irked an entire community
with her mishandling of the Punjab situation by first hobnobbing with Jarnail
Singh Bhindranwale and then sanctioning Operation Bluestar to let Army into the
sanctum sanctorum of the Golden Temple of Amritsar. Invocation of the incident
perpetrated by Mrs Gandhi’s bodyguards Satwant Singh and Beant Singh in Jashodaben’s
RTI application is ludicrous.
Second, if Jashodaben feared
that her life was imperilled because she was an embarrassment for the prime
minister — with the presumption that Modi is evil — a politician is likely to
avoid discomfiture by preventing the disclosure. Now that the whole world knows
Modi was once married, what is the point silencing his separated wife?
Factoring in both the reasons
above, and given that Jashodaben led a secluded, low-profile life till last
year, chances are high that political rivals of the BJP — most probably,
low-rung, too-clever-by-half Congress leaders in Mehsana district of Gujarat —
are inciting the poor lady for trouble.
Liberal view
With all its flaws, the
Indian mainstream media is better than the tabloid and paparazzi-driven
European media that drove Princess of Wales Diana Frances to a fatal car crash
while pushing a host of lesser celebrities to the brink of substance abuse and
depression. What our public figures do in their private lives have never
bothered our journalists in print, if insiders were to ignore the Press
Club-style gossips that never turn official. Displaying equal maturity, voters
have never brought in a government or dropped one on the basis of how the
party’s leaders conducted themselves at home. So, what explains the zeal of
this very crop of people who spent the whole of yesterday on social media,
counselling the prime minister what he should do about his wife? The poking
certainly did not behove those who love to be identified as liberals.
Ironically, while the
‘liberals’ are purportedly anti-Brahminism, they are today speaking the
language of the Brahminical faction in the Sangh Parivar that was against an
OBC Modi’s rise till the last year owing to his clash with Sanjay Joshi. They
were the Brahmins in the Sangh that first carried out a whisper campaign about
Modi’s marriage to counter the public humiliation a Brahmin Joshi had to
undergo due to an allegation of sexual indiscretion.
Spiritual view
It is surprising to note that
the Indian commentariat has not internalised Indian spiritual mores. In a
nation where Gautama Siddhartha abandons his wife — coincidentally called
Yashodhara, the pristine version of Jashoda — to answer his spiritual calling,
some commentators are finding it difficult to come to terms with the fact that
a teenager (more about this later) with an urge to renounce life excused
himself from marriage and wandered about in the Himalayas in search of some
greater meaning of life. The Buddha must be heaving a sigh of relief that his
times did not see 24x7 television channels and an enthusiastic accompaniment by
Twitter and Facebook to put his journey under constant scrutiny, more so
because, unlike Modi, he also had a son whom he did not care for either. And
that was perfectly acceptable to our ancestors who revered him for his Eight
Fold Path and not held the act of abandonment of family against him. Where one
can take a lesson from the Buddha and extrapolate it on Modi, many years later
when the founder of Buddhism was far from being the old Prince Siddhartha, he
ran into his wife and son again. He did not ask them to come back to his life.
The tradition did not stop there.
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu left his wife Bishnupriya in search of Lord Krishna. He
would meet his mother off and on after taking sannyasa. When he would
visit his old house, he would call out for his mother from outside the abode. Mother
Sachi Devi would urge the daughter-in-law to stay indoors as she would come out
to meet her son. For the sannyasi, even the sight of his ‘former’ wife
was forbidden!
Modi, focussed on the job of
prime minister, wouldn’t be following the Buddha if he were to call Jashodaben
back to his life. Following in the footsteps of Chaitanya, he still meets his
mother Heera ba but never his wife.
This is not to raise a contemporary
politician to the high pedestal of saints. But the whole village of Vadnagar
bears testimony to the fact that Modi was driven by the idea of renunciation
from early childhood. One may visit the Belur and Rajkot branches of
Ramakrishna Mission whose records reveal that a young Narendra had approached
Swami Madhavananda Maharaj and Swami Atmasthananda to make him a monk of the
Mission’s order.
One may or may not agree with
the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh that Modi joined later. That
takes nothing away from the fact that he was convinced that was the right path
for him, and family did not figure in his frame of mind or scheme of things at
that point of time. Even today, his acquaintances say he has no social circle;
he thinks nothing beyond his work.
Within this section on
spirituality, I am impelled to bring in another hypothesis. What if this unifocal
man decides to embrace his wife eventually? Remember Lord Rama from the
Ramayana. The lord tried his best to be a good husband as much as a good king.
Feminists will tell you how miserably he failed on the first count.
Historical view
Since the so-called liberals
are also rationalists or atheists who pooh-pooh the Ramayana as mythology,
let’s study the private life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He could neither
keep wife Kasturba happy — imposing on her, for example, the strict code of
cleanliness that entailed manual cleaning of toilets in the ashrams — nor could
he satisfy his eldest son, a bewildered Harilal, who hopped, skipped and jumped
from the dream of a Bar-at-Law from England, conversion to Islam and back to
Arya Samaj, appearance in his father’s funeral in a state of dereliction and eventual
death of a liver disease induced by alcoholism. Given that Modi is known to be
a one-track mind that cannot think beyond work, what homely pleasure can he
offer to Jashodaben?
Therefore, why not divorce,
one might ask. But what is divorce meant for? Either one or both the partners
want to remarry, or one is eyeing a lucrative alimony. The first is unthinkable
for both Narendrabhai and Jashodaben. The second is not plausible; the wife
could have demanded monetary help if she had to when the husband was Chief
Minister of Gujarat for almost 13 years.
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Jashodaben and Narendrabhai Modi Photo courtesy: india.com |
The facts
Modi’s father Damodarbhai was
a domineering personality in the family whose decisions none dared contradict,
let alone challenge. He had promised his childhood friend that the latter’s
daughter would be married to Narendra. The day elder sons Sombhai and Amritbhai
were getting wedded together, Damodarbhai ordered Narendra to get into the
wedding arena and tie the knot with Jashoda. The intimidated son, who had
barely crossed 17 years of his life and was terribly in awe of his father,
obliged.
That very day, however, he
could speak to his newly wedded wife. He said he was never meant for grihastha
(household life) and would leave to lead the life of an ascetic soon, which he
did two years later. In the meantime, he hardly stayed home; his childhood
friends recall his unfathomable quest for something otherworldly for which he
wandered about in the region. The marriage with Jashoda was not consummated. Before
leaving for the Himalayas, he told her she was free to marry again. From a
distance, he ensured that Jashoda completed her formal education so that she
could fend for herself. Indeed, she went on to become a teacher, thanks to her
education inspired by the husband who wasn’t.
The whole of Vadnagar village
knew about this one-day marriage, and so did the local branch of the RSS. This
organisation does not accept married men as pracharaks, but the Sangh
did accept Modi as one because it knew this marriage meant nothing.
Conclusion
Leave the separated couple
alone. Modi’s primary organisation, with full knowledge of the facts pertaining
to his conjugal condition, had accepted him and, for more than a year, fought
with competitors within the Bharatiya Janata Party who nursed prime ministerial
ambitions to prop him as the saviour of the country passing through a dire
phase of economic slowdown and threats to national security. Now, it’s not the prime
minister’s marital status that is holding the nation’s development and keeping
its borders and territory unsecured. A public figure’s private life is none of
our business.
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