Modi spreading false image of India abroad: Mukundan

Writer M. Mukundan has alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is painting a false image of India abroad.

“The true facts about poverty reigning in the country are being masked and instead fantasies about India’s cultural heritages are being spread”.

Mr. Mukundan said this while addressing a meet the press programme here on Wednesday organised by the Kollam Press Club. He said that even in the biggest cities of the country there were squalid slums and the people living in such slums drank highly contaminated water.

“Hiding these facts and presenting a rosy picture of past myths does not make any sense”.

He said that the murder of the Kannada writer M.M. Kalburgi had badly eroded the image of the country. “The murder had earned India the bad name that it is a country where writers are targeted and killed”.

Mr. Mukundan who was here in connection with the launch of his latest novel

Kuda Nannakunna Choyi said that he had reservations on the trend among a section of writers returning awards they had received for their works or resigning from positions in academies to register protest against any development.

“It is like running away from the battlefield”.

He said that his new novel dealt with fascism and interventions of Sangh Parivar forces, two topics which the nation hotly discusses now. Because of the attitude of governments elected to power, the people were fast losing confidence in democracy. “The country urgently needs good governments”.

It is wrong to use the teachings of people like Sree Narayana Guru as stepping stones to attain political power. “I disagree with the SNDP Yogam general secretary Vellapally Natesan on this issue”. If the existing situation in Kerala continued, the future of the State would be in peril, he said. Big changes should happen for the State to make true progress.

Writers should not turn into politicians and wherever they had, it was only failure. But writers could strengthen the rulers. The right step for writers was to stand with the establishment and act as corrective forces, he added.