When “Howdy Modi”, a near-celestial mega event, was unfurled in Houston, Texas, on the 19th of September 2019, Trump’s victory in the November 2020 presidential election seemed settled.
My Prime Minister turned prophetic on that occasion, and decided that Trump would continue in office. ‘Abki baar, Trump Sarkar!’ (meaning, “This election will result in a Trump government”).
Being a patriotic Indian, I concluded that there was nothing beyond what my Prime Minister had decided. Not even the Almighty could go against it. So, I lost interest in the 2020 elections.
I suffered a jolt when Biden outpaced Trump. But I bought into Trump’s grievance that the election was rigged. Biden didn’t exactly look a thief. Not merely because he was a Roman Catholic, but also because his face did not resemble Veerappan’s. But, still I went with Trump. Why? I didn’t want to believe that Modi could go wrong. Especially, the possibility of election results contradicting his will was unthinkable to me.
So, I continued to believe that election fraud would be exposed, which would ensure Trump’s continuation in the White House.
I didn’t know then that the courts in the US were supernaturally insensitive and anti-Modi. One after the other, they rejected Trump’s pleas with the sort of disdain that you associate only with atheists. I felt disoriented.
How could the courts make light of Modi’s election prophecies, stated with compelling cocksureness? I felt that the courts were reckless in doing so. After all, none of the election predictions by Modi or Amit Shah had gone wrong to the best of my knowledge. In the last Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won exactly the number of seats they predicted that the Party would corner.
So, I attached my hopes to the Congressional procedure on the 6th of January. At least the members of the Congress and the Senators would rectify the mistake? I was shocked again. Despite the encouragement by an inspired mob of rioters, they abdicated the responsibility to vindicate my PM’s prophecy. Even Mike Pence, that backboneless Republican, certified the election results. I had hoped that he at least would declare Trump the winner, even if he did not have the authority to do so. I was all the more disappointed because, barely hours before Pence turned a coward, a fervent prayer-session was conducted around his chair in the Congress. A bunch of frenzied Christians, led by a colourful Qanon shaman, had prayed for saving America from Biden’s talons, plentifully sprayed with ‘amens’ and ‘hallelujahs’. God was obliged to hear their prayer, especially given the shaman’s horned outfit. After all that, what Mike Pence did is unforgivable.
Now there is only a thin sliver of an alibi for me to cling to. Modi’s prophecy belongs to the age of faith. American elections happened in a culture of reason and common sense. My PM’s predications cannot fail in the Indian context, where politics is a matter of faith. In modern democracies Prime Ministers are respected. In our democracy, we worship our PM. Saying a word in disagreement with him is anti-national. This ‘anti-national’ is the same as ‘heretical’. In the age of faith, heretics were cast out. So, it must be in politics, when it becomes religion. Those who disagree with my PM must go to Pakistan.
It is a settled principle that everything is influenced by its context. For example, Jesus could not perform miracles in Capernaum because the people there had no faith. That does not mean that Jesus was a bogus miracle-worker, like our present-day godmen. It only means that the people of that place were not up to the mark. Trump committed a strategic mistake. He allowed the election to be conducted in the US. He should have known that America is a post-Christian culture. There, prophecies are less efficacious than opinion surveys. Also, paper ballots are less sensitive to supernatural promptings than electronic voting machines (EVMs). It is easier for God to modulate gadgets electrical than it is for him to hand-hold millions of voters (most of them agnostics, atheist, hedonists and heathens) and force them to stamp for Trump.
We can only hope that Trump will be wiser for this experience, and insist on conducting the American presidential election in 2024 in India, so that the desired outcome can be ensured. He should have known that there is no trade treaty between India and the US by which prophecies of Indian origin, if exported, have to be of guaranteed efficacy.
Trump should vent his ire on ‘his’ Jesus Christ; especially the Jesus Christ portrayed in the Bible he flashed in front of St. John’s Church in June of 2020. Jesus knows that Trump is a politician. What’s the use of a Christ or a Buddha or a Rama to a politician – whether in the US or in India – if they don’t ensure victories in elections? Some of my friends in the US tell me that Trump’s PDA (public display of affection for Modi), was inspired by the extent to which Lord Ram enabled Modi, not only to become the PM but also to hold on to the office. This pattern struck Trump, reportedly, as novel and worthwhile. He concluded that none rivalled Modi in this art.
You can’t blame Trump. He is not, after all, a theologian. He did not know that gods, like kings and courts, are bounded by jurisdiction. A high court cannot bind a country by its verdict; only its Supreme Court can. What the Queen of England says does not apply to India. (It does not apply even to the UK, but that’s another matter.) So, what Lord Ram can do for Modi, he can’t do for Trump. Lord Ram’s jurisdiction is confined to India. Given the secular culture of the US, Jesus Christ has no jurisdiction over it either, especially in matters political.
So, there was what we might call a tribal discrepancy in Modi’s prophesying the outcome of the American election. The framework of the divine within which the said prophecy was pronounced, was outside its jurisdictional remit.
I learn from reliable sources that Trump is mulling over these conundrums, back in California. Why old-world gods cannot enjoy universal jurisdiction in a globalised world is the question now uppermost in his mind. Now that he doesn’t have to pump himself with daily doses of hydroxychloroquine or wash his innards with detergents – consumed orally or injected into his arm – he can be more clear-minded than he was in the last four years.
Besides, I am told, that he now regrets that he built the wall on the Mexican border. Had he erected the same around the White House, he could have kept Biden out for decades, after the enviable example of Vladimir Putin. Russians tell me that in their language ‘Putin’ means ‘put-in’. So, Putin is one who stays put in the office. When the office and the incumbent become absolutely inseparable, you designate him, in Russian, putin. You make the ‘p’ capital to turn it into a proper noun.
That is where Trump’s parents weren’t farsighted enough. It is not that the surname ‘Trump’ is wholly inappropriate for the ex-president. He lived his name to the last minute in office. He trumped democracy as no one else has. He trumped every convention governing the transfer of power. He trumped his own nominees and associates. He will continue to trump whatever he can; for he wishes to honour his parents by living up to the name they gave him.
So, Trump will trump to the last. But that, it seems, won’t help as much as it takes to feed his power-addiction. It would have been a different ball game if his were name Putin. It didn’t have to be Vladimir; ‘Donald Putin’ would have done the trick. But there is a catch here. Surnames afford no margin of choice. You can’t choose your father; just as your father could not choose his. Not even a Trump can do it. So, if born to a Trump, you stay Trump. It may be that, in the next birth, he’ll have better luck and be born a Putin.
But there is a catch here too. Trump, being a Christian, cannot believe in re-births. So, he is done for. He will stay the same. And that is the tragedy.
