I write to you from India where I will be hosting the British Chancellor of the Exchequer.
When I think back to PM Modi’s Independence Speech, many people said it was a great speech, and he was a great man. They are wrong.
His speech was exactly what so many of the readers of this paper think, ordinary people like you and me; protect our women, provide toilets for our mothers and sisters and daughters.
He is a giant because the of the pygmies before him who never bothered to express such a view on Independence Day, who never spoke of a national shame on Independence Day but always sought to beat their chests about their own greatness and attack their neighbours for their own failings.
PM Modi is great, is a giant, because he is ordinary, like you and me. For all those who think criticising your nation does not make you a patriot, you were all shocked to hear his speech. To politicians who think they can only speak from a script and yet appear sincere, you were proved hollow and shallow. To his opponents who think those who say they are Hindu must be fundamentalists, you were proved cowards of your own fears.
This is what it means to be a Hindu Nationalist. To say, we need toilets, to say crimes against women are a national shame. That is patriotism. The secularists never managed it on Independence Day. They had their chance and they were shown to be dwarfs, that is why a man of ordinary stature looks a giant – he is us – the common patriot.
When you look around you may see the poor, I see the shame of what has befallen a great and wondrous civilisation, always too open to foreign influence, I see royal blood in pauper’s clothes. You see a destitute woman, I see the honour of a nation reduced to begging on the streets.
Anyone who speaks the truth without fear is great. We all do it in our living rooms each evening. The Prime Minister just did that. A simple thing, but in the years since independence hardly a PM had that simple thought, to do simply that. Speak the truth about the nation’s problems.
As the words of the unofficial national anthem state:
Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen,
With her hands that strike and her swords of sheen,
Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned,
And the Muse a hundred-toned,
Pure and perfect without peer,
Mother lend thine ear,
Mother sweet, I salute thee,
Mother great and free!
