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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Narendra Modi Could Have Learnt so Much From GD Agarwal. But It's Too Late Now. -Rohit Kumar

Narendra Modi Could Have Learnt so Much From GD Agarwal. But It's Too Late Now. -Rohit Kumar

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published Published on Oct 18, 2018   modified Modified on Oct 18, 2018
-TheWire.in

While the PM proclaimed in 2014 that ‘Maa Ganga had called him’ and spent the next four years spending close to Rs 5,000 crore publicising himself and advertising his intentions, the other man led a life of near-obscurity working away year after year for the cause of a cleaner Ganga.

The act of public fasting has been so completely reduced to political gimmickry in recent times that it barely registers in the public mind any more. Politicians, in particular, end up inviting derision more than anyone else for their token fasts, which normally don’t last more than a day (a recent case in point being Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah’s high profile day-long fast earlier this year to “protest disruptions of the Budget session of Parliament”).

So when news broke on October 11 that an 86-year-old Ganga activist had literally fasted unto death, protesting the government’s complete failure to make any real progress in cleaning up the river, it gave us pause. Perhaps it was the photograph of his gaunt, bearded and gentle face that so many of us saw for the first time, or perhaps it was the fact that he was an alumnus of IIT Kanpur who had left everything behind to become a Ganga activist or maybe it was the just the stark news that an 86-year-old man had died fasting for his beloved river, that stunned, moved and, yes, angered so many.

Prof G.D. Agarwal (or Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand as he later came to be called) had done something so few in public life have done in recent years. – he had kept his word. In a letter written on the June 22, he had simply and briefly informed the prime minister that “because you have not taken certain urgent steps to clean up the Ganga that I had expected you to take, I will fast till I die.” And 110 days later, he did.

But the thing that has ended up staring us in the face the most – unwittingly perhaps – has been the contrast between the man who had written the letter and the man to whom the letter had been written. Although Swami Sanand called Narendra Modi “his younger brother” and addressed him with affection and firmness, just as an older brother would a younger one, the dissimilarities between the two men could not have been greater.

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TheWire.in, 17 October, 2018, https://thewire.in/environment/narendra-modi-gd-agarwal-ganga


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