Blessed Are The Poor

BJP’s deliberate efforts at establishing poverty as the chief element in the bio-data of its aspirants for high office

- MK Kaw

THE cognoscenti who keep a sharp lookout on national events must have noticed with suppressed smiles the BJP’s deliberate effort at establishing poverty as the chief element in the bio-data of its aspirants for high office. When we analyse the qualities of head and heart possessed by the two gentlemen who have won the race to Rashtrapati Bhavan and the Vice President’s office, we are impressed by the preponderant emphasis on infantile poverty. As in everything else, the world seems to have begun with Narendra Modi.

Would it make an iota of difference if we cite a quotation from The Bible where, among other qualities, the Beatitudes talk with considerable emphasis on the virtue of poverty? “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven………,” says a guy called Jesus Christ more than 2000 years ago.

India itself has had an indigenous tradition that extols poverty. In ancient India, the sanyasi was admired as the highest kind of human being, for he had renounced all kinds of material possessions. The Buddha, while upsetting the ritualism of the Vedas, also described the Bikshu as the ideal kind of renunciate.