
Friends, Citizens,
Patriots,
So here we are, at the
end of a most eventful cycle, a time when the flag has never stood so high, on
so strong a pole, with so many people across the world watching in awe and
admiration. That is our offering, my offering to our beloved nation, for whih
no sacrifice is too great. The greatest contribution, of course, came from you.
We couldn’t have done a thing without your hand on the gun, your shoulder at
the wheel, your presence at the frontline where so many of you made the supreme
sacrifice. That is why I call myself the Prime Servant. We are not rulers, we
live to do your bidding. Unlike all the others, our calling card is service and
we give it greater importance than anything else. Your trust and your wishes
mean everything to us.
To give an example,
when you gave us your trust in Assam, we said we would address your grievances
over infiltrators and outsiders who have set themselves up at the cost of local
people. So we took up the NRC on which the Congress has been sitting all these
decades, because they profited so much from the infiltrators by swelling their
own vote banks. There’s a huge stink now over what we’re doing but it’s mostly
the jholawalas who love to argue points of law without understanding the
feelings of ordinary folk. They don’t lose jobs to outsiders because they don’t
work in the first place. All they do is talk a fine game about equal treatment
and incite people with their pretence of tolerance. But they show their own
intolerance by the way they dismiss the real fears of locals that they will be
sidelined both culturally and economically by the infiltrators.
But we have this
matter in hand and I can promise you that we will ram the solution down their
throats and make your dream come true. Your wish is our command and we will do everything
to make it happen. In fact, we’re looking into making this a nationwide
register. That is our promise, the PS’ promise. We stand by you, but for that
you must also stand by us. Together, we’re invincible. All we ask for is your
trust.
You must understand
that only a strong man can give you what is needed. Cast your mind back to
February 27. He would never have done it if you didn’t want it, but you made
your preference very clear. So he took us into the heart of danger and hit the
enemy where it hurts most. Could anyone else have done that? Compare this with
November 26, 2008 and you have your answer. You need someone with a 65-inch
chest (some exaggeration here, it’s 56”) to protect your interests, a big man
with a big heart and the will to act, not a smooth-talking baby face who has
never seen hardship, never really worked at anything seriously. The enemy
understands that we will slap back hard if he tries any more provocations so he
will be careful in future. Your choice now is between a man who will grab the
problem by the throat and a fellow who will sit down to tea and pakodas
and talk about everything but the problem at hand. As I said, we take your safety seriously.
Love, they keep
telling everyone, is a great leveller and is a better way to a solution. Your
Prime Servant is the first to say yes. Where would we be if it wasn’t love for
our subjects people that makes us work so hard? It is love for our Lord that
makes us so determined to build that temple in Ayodhya. It is love for you, my beloved countrymen,
that motivated your servant to found Swacch Bharat and Ayushman Bharat. We rest
so much better knowing that you are now cared for in a way no had ever tried
before. But even Lord Ram, the embodiment of righteousness, knew that love could
not persuade Ravan to give up his unrighteous ways. The wicked need the sight
of a sword and the smell of blood to remind them of the cost of crossing the
line.
I myself am the most
peaceful of men but when I think of the vile crimes committed by our neighbour
I find it hard to contain myself. Yet when we took office your servant’s first
impulse was to talk towards a solution. He knows how costly violence can be as
you can’t bring back the dead. It was frustrating, like banging your head
against a brick wall but he persisted. And what was the result? Terrorist
attacks, hate speech and a bland refusal to admit responsibility for these
crimes. It was only then that he decided, reluctantly, that the mailed fist was
needed if we are to protect what we love. For that he has been labelled
trigger-happy and oblivious to the dangers of starting a war by accident. I
would even say efforts are being made to paint him in the same colours as the
terrorists who attack and kill our people with impunity. Luckily, your servant
has broad shoulders and is happy to take this bullet also if he can protect his
people better. He doesn’t look for thanks because he is only doing his job. We
always work for your safety, no matter the consequences.
One thing we are asked
by everyone, friend, devotee and opponent, is, what have you done in your time
in office? It’s a fair question because you want to know why you should endorse
us a second time. Well, the first thing is Swacch Bharat and the second is
universal electrification. Every village, no matter how remote, is connected to
the power grid. We said we’d do it and we have. Almost every home now has a
working toilet thanks to a scheme that we started as soon as we took office.
More than two crore new homes have subsidised gas connections because of our
redistribution programme. And as I already said, we have just rolled out
Ayushman Bharat but even at this early date it promises to usher in a new era
of healthcare that will transform this country. Its potential is hard to
explain but I think five years from now people will be talking about the
miracle of medical facilities available to every citizen, rich or poor.
You can be certain
that these four programmes will become permanent, whether you give us another
chance or not. If someone else takes our place they too will continue with it.
They may rename it but they will never suspend or weaken it. They dare not.
This is basic citizen care and it makes me proud that we introduced it though
others had 70 years in which to bring in a scheme that would make life better
for small people. It is a measure of our love for the people who gave us their
trust if not their vote. It also shows up all those who say we aren’t capable
of doing anything positive, for the good of everyone.
The opposition never
loses a chance to make fun of our record, to paint us as this gang of
bloodthirsty mediaeval fanatics whose only goal is to make life hell for
non-Hindus. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Yes, there has been
trouble and tragedy in some states and some of our senior leaders (who really
should know better) have made unfortunate remarks about some of our
co-citizens.
I say nothing about the liberals who daily mock our faith and our culture. They are intolerant of almost every aspect of it, whether it is worship, rituals or traditions, but find it perfectly in order to observe Christmas though everyone knows the divine birth is a fiction.
Let me tell you a
little story here. The liberal crowd always talks of the importance of “the
right to offend”. They say freedom of speech has no meaning if it forbids you
from saying things that offend some people. Now what these people have said is
highly offensive. I find their remarks extremely objectionable. But should I put them in jail or suspend them
from the party because of that? Isn’t that behaving like a dictator? What does
free speech really mean in that case? Moreover, some of them have decades of
selfless public service in their background. They are good people who
unfortunately went overboard at one time. Do we negate their entire record
because of one mistake?
I say nothing about
the liberals who daily mock our faith and our culture. They are intolerant of
almost every aspect of it, whether it is worship, rituals or traditions, but
find it perfectly in order to observe Christmas though everyone knows the
divine birth is a fiction. We don’t like it but we recognise it is their right,
as the honourable Supreme Court has observed. Maybe they should concede that
right to us as well, some of the time at least.
As for the violence, I
agree that there is no excuse for such barbarism. When Akhlaque Ahmed was
murdered by a mob and his home torched, no one was more mortified than me. But
there are strict limits to what the Centre can do. Law and order is a state subject
and this event happened in Uttar Pradesh. We could not do anything but watch
and wait for the state to call us for help. The never did. They said I was very
late with my reaction which was also inadequate but I was under some constraint
as the UP government was run by a different party which had made a special
fetish of protecting the minority community. A strong remark at that point
could have strained state-Centre ties and would certainly have been described
as posturing. I did not want false allegations of Central interference
distracting us from our real work so early in our tenure. In hindsight, I was
probably too cautious but the motives were honest.
Now the same people
have found a new scapegoat in Sadhvi Pragya Singh. How, they’re asking in fake
outrage, can our party endorse a terror accused as an election candidate? Well,
I have several questions for these people. Why is a person suspected of being
at the heart of the 1984 mass murder of Sikhs in Delhi the chief minister of
Madhya Pradesh? Why did the prime minister of the time excuse the carnage as
“When a big tree falls, the earth shakes”? Why did so many of the conspirators
end up running the government instead of being put in jail or hanged? On the
same subject, how did the Don of Siwan, Mohammad Shahabuddin, multiple murderer
and gangster, become a four-term MP from one of the opposition parties? Even as
he sat in Parliament, he was running a criminal empire and plotting and
committing murder at will under the protection of the state chief minister, who
is now himself a convicted criminal.
Let me make one thing clear right away lest I be accused of hypocrisy. Every incident of violence must be condemned in one voice. No one has the right to take the law into their hands. Having said that, please understand that this is a vast country barely policed in some parts.
I don’t want to
comment on the candidate because whatever I say will be twisted to suit
political ends, but this is a person cleared by the Election Commission. No
doubt she is a terror accused but whatever happened to the principle of
innocent until proved guilty? This central element of our judicial system was
proudly waved whenever Lalu Yadav or his cronies stood for election. Perhaps
they should extend the same courtesy to others.
Friends,
I hate to say it but
we are being targeted by a blizzard of false accusations. It has been rolling
for the last four years, a constant stream of lies ranging from our supposed
intolerance to hate speech to intimidation, discrimination against the minority
community to inciting communal passions to orchestrated violence and murder. We
have been accused of every crime in the book and some outside it. The
“evidence” they cite is mostly anecdotal, a number of unconnected incidents
arranged to look like a conspiracy. Let me make one thing clear right away lest
I be accused of hypocrisy. Every incident of violence must be condemned in one
voice. No one has the right to take the law into their hands. Having said that,
please understand that this is a vast country barely policed in some parts.
That’s been the story of the last 70 years. Violence has a million faces here
and we can’t possibly name them all or stop them every time. We can only advise
states on law and order as we have no right to police them. Even so, if you look
at the numbers, it is in a much better place than five years ago. To cherry pick
examples from a number of states run by our party and show them as part of a
countrywide conspiracy to demonise a particular community is a display of
paranoia on the same scale as we are accused of harbouring.
On a personal note,
every case of violence makes me feel ashamed of my failure to prevent it. This
is my job and I’m falling down on it. But what really wounds me is the charge
that I’m okay with targeting Muslims. It leaves me speechless because in my
book a victim of violence has no creed or colour. It’s like that tag of
merchant of death. After a while I stopped flinching. But it never ceased to
hurt, like being stabbed in the heart. With some hesitation I should point out
that scores of perpetrators of the 2002 mass murder in my home state are
sitting in jail as a result of the prosecutions we initiated. We are the only
state to do so in recent memory. This is not a matter of pride; we can’t bring
back the dead but we are making the guilty pay.
Anyhow, let me stop
defending myself. What we have done in the last five years is unprecedented in
many ways. The damage wrought by our predecessor was a lot worse than we had
estimated but we are fixing it although there is still some way to go. One
thing you can be sure of is that no one is talking about corruption because we
don’t allow it. We haven’t kept all our promises, especially on jobs. There are
many reasons for that; it wasn’t for want of trying.
I know people make fun
of our promise of acche din. Let me just remind you of the four
achievements I mentioned earlier. I’m sure there are many families who have
felt the impact of all four and that it has made a positive difference. Just
look around in their neighbourhood and ask one such family if they are
experiencing acche din. Their answer will probably tell you everything
you need to know about this government and this movement of Indians. I should
also add that as the schemes expand to their optimal size they will create tens
of thousands of jobs in various sectors that will be needed to keep them
running. These in turn will create new competencies that will spur more change
and growth. We are indeed on the cusp of a huge change and I invite everyone to
come on board.
Most politicians and
parties have a common trick. They know some of the people will always vote for
them, some of the people need to be persuaded to vote for them, and some never
will vote for them. The most loyal get the least priority and the least loyal
the first preference. We are the only ones to give our most loyal supporters
what they want. Those who don’t support us also get exactly what they deserve
most. No one can accuse of not being inclusive but we don’t pander to anyone.
Remember, dear friends,
we will always be working for you. On that note, I await that dawn when a new
era begins. Until then, this is your servant,
JAI HIND.