Why Modi did not gifted Gita to Donald Trump
This from an RSS sambhag pracharak, an organization that spent more than half a century misleading and confusing India and demonizing the West, a man denied a visa to America for ten years for “severe violations of religious freedom”, the only Indian ever denied a visa under this provision. Black is white, and white is black in India. Yesterday’s truth is today’s falsehood, and nothing is what it seems. But, what I am most unhappy about is that, from all accounts, Mr. Modi did not give Mr. Trump a copy of the Bhagavad Gita.
In September 2014, he gave Mr. Obama a copy of the Gita, in the same year he also gave Shinzo Abe a copy, and, also in September, he gave Emperor Akihito a copy, saying to Indians in Tokyo, “For gifting, I brought a Gita. I do not know what will happen in India after this… Our secular friends will create ‘toofan'(storm) that what does Modi think of himself? He has taken a Gita with him that means he has made this one also communal.”
I’m secular, and what would make me unhappy is not that he gave Mr. Trump a copy of the Gita, but that he didn’t. It would have been great to see the right wing leader, sword bearer of Christians and the Evangelicals receive a copy, from the leader of the Hindu far right in India.
Mr. Modi, as usual, got it all wrong. Why should secular people in India kick up a storm when he gave copies of the Gita to three world leaders, or if he gave David Cameron a specially handcrafted pair of bookends with verses from the Gita on them?
It just proves the point that Secularism Rules Worldwide, because secularism was on display when all four world leaders accepted the gift with grace and humility. It was not the giver’s secularity, the belief that all men are equal and so are their religions, that was at the test, it was the spirit in which it was received. By accepting it with grace, the Christian Obama, and the Emperor of Japan, the highest authority of the Shinto religion, were poster boys for secularism. By giving it, Mr. Modi continued to say, “I am a Hindu nationalist”…
Which is why it’s sad that Mr. Modi did not have the guts to give the world’s most powerful man, an avowed Christian right winger, a copy of India’s greatest book. Wouldn’t it have been fun?
