Historian and political commentator Ramachandra Guha has called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a coward who is afraid to face parliament.
“As PM he’s accountable to parliament,” Guha said, adding that this pointed to “the failure of the prime minister at a time of grave national crisis”.
He added that “Modi lives in a bubble of his own, hoping he can ride it out.”
In a 35-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, based upon an op-ed he wrote for The Telegraph a day ago, the arguments of which he has taken considerably further in this interview, Guha said Modi would show “moral growth” and “redeem himself” and also provide “some sense of atonement” for his failure to contain the riots of 2002, when he was chief minister of Gujarat, if now he would sack Biren Singh as chief minister of Manipur.
Elaborating on Modi’s failure to address parliament, Guha said: “He’s being shielded by Rajnath Singh and Amit Shah…they want to protect him, placate him and flatter him and not expose him to debate.”
In this connection, Guha also said “Om Birla and Jagdeep Dhankhar’s partisan conduct is shocking”.
Guha added: “What’s happening in Manipur and the government’s failure to act, both at the state and central level, has damaged the Indian Republic and Indian democracy and the prospects of our country and its citizens.”
Guha said Manipur is “a mixture of anarchy and civil war”.
In the interview, he speaks about how Manipur is different to earlier inter-communal conflicts in other states. He has two reasons for saying so. He also compares and contrasts what’s happening in Manipur today with what happened in Gujarat in 2002. He also analyses why Biren Singh is still in office and provides three separate answers.
“The situation in Manipur today is far more grave than that faced in Punjab in the 1980s, in Jammu and Kashmir in the 1990s, in Gujarat in the 2000s,” he highlights.
Watch the full interview here.
