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Today no country in the world matters much other than America (USA) in international trade, commerce, war and peace. Donald Trump, its President, is like an elephant in US politics that knows its strength. Which is why, he seems unpredictable to some. — Abracadabra of 4.12.2024
America, United States of America, in truth is a country of immigrants. That was written boldly in a banner hoisted at eye-level across a building at a small town in Texas that I visited in 1992. Some Hispanic and mixed group of people were protesting in a street corner. Apparently, the protest was about government’s action against illegal immigrants. Like Birthright Citizenship, in America protesting at the drop of a hat is also a birthright! Like Lokmanya Tilak saying, “Freedom is my birthright and I shall have it” when we were under the British.
I remembered all this after listening to President Donald Trump’s inaugural speech on 20th, January 2025.
I am an unabashed Trump bhakt, as also a Modi bhakt, but as Dr. B.R. Ambedkar had advised we Indians, I am not laying my liberties at the feet of these great men. I also do not trust them with their immense power because that power may enable them to subvert our Democratic Institutions and even the Constitution. Trump allegedly tried it when he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. He has done it now after winning the 2024 election with his Executive Order undoing the Birthright Citizenship provided in the American Constitution, for example. Just as Indira Gandhi did with our Constitution after declaring Emergency in 1975. Of course, Trump is challenged in the Courts. Our Modi, in contrast, is a typical Hindu Sanatani Indian. He will not go that far, though he should have on some issues that made the majority Hindus irrelevant by the pre-2014 governments.
I indulge in these thoughts after reading about Washington woman Bishop’s speech at the Presidential inaugural prayer service on 21st January 2025.
The provocation for Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde to make a direct plea to (or attack on?) the US President Donald Trump, who was present along with his wife Melania Trump and Vice-President JD Vance present along with his wife Usha Vance, was Trump’s speech after the oath-taking. He said, “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.”
If this is social engineering of gay, lesbian and transgender, this will lead to fear in their lives, according to the Bishop.
Trump had also vowed, in his speech, to end the earlier government’s policy of trying to socially engineer Race and Gender into every aspect of public and private life. He said, “We will forge a society that is colour blind and merit based.” He further announced restrictions on immigration and to end Birthright Citizenship.
Well, the whole hell broke loose in the opposite camp and the first stone was thrown by Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, who said:
“Let me make one final plea Mr. President. You told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.
“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labour in poultry farms and meat-packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.
“Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honour the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people, good of all people in this nation and the world. Amen.”
America is a Democracy of a Presidential form with the President armed with immense power in comparison to Indian Democracy of a Parliamentary form. In our Democracy, neither the President nor the Prime Minister has such absolute power as an American President has. Yet, with majority in the Parliament and an enabling provision in our Constitution for an Ordinance route, to bypass the Parliament, in case of exigencies, Modi must do for all-Indians what he must in the name of liberty, equality, fraternity, social justice and equal application of secular principles, without discrimination on the basis of ‘majority’ and ‘minority.’
Remember in 2013 the then Congress Party Vice-President Rahul Gandhi tore into an Ordinance brought in by his party-led UPA government? And Dr. Manmohan Singh, the then Prime Minister, was made a pathetic spectacle in the eyes of the people. He could not do anything to undo what Rahul Gandhi did. But now Prime Minister Modi is not in a situation in which Dr. Manmohan Singh was. In the circumstances, Modi may well learn a few lessons from Trump to Make India First for the first time.
Be that as it may, what interested me was Trump’s reaction to Bishop Budde’s sermon. It was characteristic of Trump the world has known. He slammed the sermon as ‘nasty, boring and uninspiring.’ I remembered English Philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who famously said, “Without a government life would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’.”
Trump said, the Bishop failed to mention about the large number of illegal immigrants — some from criminal background, from jail, mental institutions. A similar problem is haunting India. In the past invading marauders came to India, now illegal immigrants are coming.
Donald Trump said, “She is not very good in her job! She and her Church owe the public an apology.” In India too there are many from the past rulers and the places of worship who owe the people of India an apology for the historical wrongs they are guilty of. May be, India should bide its time or take some lessons from Trump in asserting the authority and in reclaiming the lost heritage of our country.
e-mail: voice@starofmysore.com
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