For ten years, the Greeks could not defeat Troy. One morning, they lifted the siege and sailed away in their ships, leaving behind a huge wooden horse. The Trojans thought it was a present for their children and dragged it inside the city.
The wooden horse, or the Trojan Horse of legend, was packed with the fiercest Greek warriors. At night, the Greek ships returned. The soldiers inside the horse came out and opened Troy’s gates. Then Troy burnt and rivers of blood flowed.
Mr Narendra Modi, the Opposition called your predecessor in the National Democratic Alliance, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a "mukhauta". Mask. They said he was a good man in a bad party. They don’t say that about you – the second bit.
But India voted for you. I did too.
I repeat, India voted for YOU. Not the sadhvis and yogis, but you. You were the wind in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s sails. How else did it win all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi despite a not-so-stellar showing in the city’s Assembly polls just five months earlier, and a drubbing eight months later?
We voted you to do what you had done in Gujarat, after 2002. We wanted safety, stability and economic progress. To be fair, your government should not be judged by the happenings of the past few months alone. The Sensex tanking is not an indictment of your policies or politics.
Sins of omission
But Prime Minister, a Muslim man should not have been lynched even if he had beef in his house. And he didn’t. A Dalit student should not have been pushed into a hopeless corner. A Jawaharlal Nehru University scholar should not have been made to run the gauntlet of lawyers.
And now Haryana is burning. The Army is out. It is not possible to go west or north from Delhi.
Safety? Stability? Economic progress?
Perhaps, these are not sins of commission. I am sure your ministers didn’t order these events. But they are clearly sins of omission. Your government is guilty of looking the other way. We waited in anticipation when Atal Bihari Vajpayee paused for effect. We wait in trepidation when you keep silent and let the fringe do the talking.
They say, the sack of Delhi started when Nadir Shah unsheathed his sword inside Sunehri Masjid. He withdrew into a shell of silence while the streets turned red with blood. The Mughal emperor pleaded pitifully for mercy but the Shah didn’t cast a word his way. His silence was the engine of slaughter. The killing stopped when he sheathed his sword and walked away.
Prime Minister, speak. The vote was for you, and for safety, stability, and economic progress. If you don’t, the Opposition will call you unmentionable names, of course, but history will say you were Hindutva’s Trojan Horse.
This article was first published on Medium.
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