Speaking Truth to Power
An Open Letter to Shri Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India
By Amit Chaudhery
(one among 1.2 + billion Indians)
Dear Prime Minister Modi
You are an eloquent man and very erudite. And the prime minister of this, the world’s largest democracy. I am a faceless man of great anonymity and greater insignificance. I am among the teeming masses who define India, both its good and its bad. I do not care for politics or politicians with attendant trappings of ceremony. Beyond broad parameters of government and governance, that is. Within this, I am exercised only by the destructiveness they bring to bear. Whilst for the most part my reaction is secretly dipped in schadenfreude, I cannot be bystander when pillage of this country’s natural capital rises exponentially. Therefore, this letter. I must also tell you that I have no affiliations to you or any rival. And, therefore neither desire nor delusion. I am not subversive, neither am I an anarchist. This, even though I believe democracy rests on the fundamental flaw that the majority of people are always right and must prevail. A five minute conversation with a specimen of this majority can cure anyone of misconception. But that’s another matter and an unpopular point of view. You regularly share your ‘Man ki Baat’with all Indians across the vast swathe of this once great country. I want to share ‘Atma ki Baat’with you. Perhaps ‘Atma ki Baat’will articulate ‘Man ki Baat’and just maybe, translate into ‘Karm ki Baat’. Any meaningful Baat, especially like the ones in context, must be clear and must be audible. Therefore, this open letter.In an age when countries increasingly seek expression and articulation through vicarious projections of strongmen, the cadence of this raucous note rises to crescendo. You, sir, are India’s strongman just as your peers from China to Turkey to Russia to America. A constellation of alphas who must prove and out-prove themselves constantly. That’s all right. It is yearning and desire, therefore, the performance of our time. But every desire, no matter how intense, is subservient and slave to limitation. Natural caps which contain us all. Within the parameters of limitation, desire and its realization is tied to the concept of Karma. Of Cause and Effect. Simply put, Sir Issac Newton’s Third Law of Physics. The point is, there are consequences, just as there is free will.Common sense tells us to exercise free will to create theconsequences we want, so that these consequences create the conditions we want. A state of altered reality. All and everything we do, rests on this fulcrum. Exceedingly simple, seldom remembered. The present state-of-affairs is Orwellian. You have been told that. It is only appropriate that I base the thesis of this unsolicited (not unwarranted) letter on George Orwell. What he had said, rings true today. Exceptionally so. “We have now sunk to a depth at which re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” Since I consider myself acceptably intelligent, I decided to say it like it is.
To read the whole letter which is quite honest and heart felt please click here