Why did Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla advise Prime Minister Narendra Modi to skip the House because of a supposed “security threat” from the Opposition? Was it to do with the “unpublished” memoir of Gen. M.M. Naravane (Retd), a former Chief of the Army Staff, which had surfaced in the House debate?
The Speaker’s claim that there was a threat to the Prime Minister inside the Lok Sabha immediately shifted the narrative to the Opposition’s allegedly threatening behaviour. It seemed to be an attempt to blunt Rahul Gandhi’s interrogation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the indecisiveness which Gen. Naravane describes in his memoir Four Stars of Destiny and to portray Mr Modi as a victim.
The timing of the government’s sudden midnight announcement of a “successful” US-India trade deal on the very day Gen. Naravane’s account of Mr Modi’s indecisiveness was aired in Parliament also smells suspicious. It turns out that the deal is unlikely to be signed until mid-March. Why then did the Prime Minister let US President Donald Trump trumpet half-truths about a done deal on social media? And why did he himself enthusiastically endorse it within hours of Mr Trump’s post?
Perhaps the answer lies in the Modi government’s obsession with controlling the narrative. Rahul Gandhi quoted from journalist Sushant Singh’s exposé in Caravan magazine on Gen. Naravane’s unpublished memoir. The carefully inflated image of Mr Modi as the ultimate guardian of India’s national security was punctured. In Gen. Naravane’s words, Mr Modi appeared as a man with sunken shoulders, passing responsibility to the Army brass during the crisis caused by Chinese incursions in Eastern Ladakh….
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After the truth-shower 