To Whom Much Is Given

By Robin Sam

282/543. To say that’s a landslide victory is to state the obvious. The media saw it coming. They called it the ‘Modi wave.’ Some veterans in the Congress party saw it coming – they decided to save their ‘hard-earned’ money that would otherwise have gone down the drain called election spending and stayed away from the contest. The Western nations’ diplomats saw it coming – their presidents and prime ministers sent their emissaries to meet with Narendra Modi to see if they could possibly do business together. The Sensex saw it coming. It kept going upwards hoping Modi will jumpstart the ailing Indian economy. The common man (the real common man, not of the Arvind Kejriwal Aam Admi variety) saw it coming, too. He swayed with the wave and sang paeans to Narendra bhai and threw his lot with him. Perhaps the only one who did not see this coming was the Indian Church. The hapless church in India was as clueless as ever. Yet, it prayed. The church put the right phrases in their prayers – ‘Give us a secular government.’ Corruption that took a new high under the Congress-led UPA government was forgotten. The UPA government’s abysmally inept handling of the country’s affairs for a decade was conveniently forgotten. It decided to vote for the grand old party again – just to keep the saffron brigade out. Or, in some other states where it had an option, it voted for what it deemed as the lesser evil.

Despite our all-forgiving nature, the nation’s real common man (the one that we call as the Gentile) has sent the corrupt and opportunistic parties and people packing. He has been particularly severe on those political parties that called themselves the champions of the underdogs – the minorities. BSP in Uttar Pradesh who claimed a messianic status with the dalits, DMK in Tamil Nadu who were deemed as the protector of minorities’ rights and Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena that cried hoarse over Marathi pride could not send even a single MP to Parliament. CPI, National Conference and AGP also bit the dust. Spectacular was the drubbing the Congress received at the electorate. The party did not win a single seat in seven states. It failed to win more than 10 seats in any state.

Why were our prayers unanswered? Why did God turn our petitions down? Why did He not act when we needed Him the most? Did we not pray well? Did we not pray enough? Weren’t our prayers fervent enough? Why, oh, why didn’t we get a minority government in the least? Even a BJP government supported from the outside by the likes of Jayalalithaa and Mamata would have been just wonderful, right?

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