A response to the author's newspaper piece titled, 'Why we need a Ram Temple in Ayodhya'
Dear Chetan,
I just read a piece you have written in a newspaper titled Why we need a Ram Temple in Ayodhya, and felt I should respond.
Now, as everyone knows, you are one of contemporary India’s most popular writers. Besides putting out your novels, you also tweet regularly, and write columns in different papers, and a lot of people read what you write. Whenever I have come across something you have written, more often than not I have disagreed with it. Often I will laugh at some article by you or some comment you have made, but till now I have not felt the need to engage or argue with you. So, why do I need to respond now, and why to this particular piece of writing? Let me try and explain.
Chetan, our country and society are at a very dangerous moment in our history. For reasons I have laid out before and will briefly repeat below, I am very wary of Narendra Modi, his organisation the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-Bharatiya Janata Party and their Hindutva ideology. However, I cannot imagine that all the millions who have voted for Modi and his people are all believers in the world-view that the prime minister and his close followers hold.
For every possibly dodgy Electronic Voting Machine vote that the RSS-BJP may have gained, I have to accept that there may be many more voters who have voted for them believing in the promises of sabka vikaas – a non-corrupt government, a non-dynastic, non-nepotistic party command, and so on.
