From Waqf to Workshops: When the PM Scoffs and Prejudice Prevails
PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi made a fantastic statement at Hisar in Haryana. He said that if all the Waqf land had been properly used, Muslim boys would not have to make a living by fixing punctures in tyres. The inference is that with the amendment his government made in the Waqf law, the condition of Muslims is set to undergo a metamorphosis. They will no longer have to do such menial jobs to earn a living.
My first impulse was to tell the Prime Minister that he should not ridicule an entire community in this manner. Instead, I would rather ask him: what is wrong with fixing punctures? If punctures are not fixed properly, there can be accidents. So, their services are crucial. In fact, no job is menial. What is condemnable is not the job, but the mindset of Modi.
In any case, it is far better than wasting precious time at the shakha, where muscles are unnecessarily flexed, lathis are wielded, and meaningless slogans are shouted. For a hundred years, Modi and Co. have been doing this—with what improvement to themselves or to the nation?
Of course, some of them have specialised in lynching Muslims alleged to be storing beef in their fridges and torturing Christians who cannot even pray in their churches in village after village in North India. It is a different matter that they cannot distinguish between beef, mutton, chicken, or sausages.
Recently, a study found that a majority of the so-called educated and rich Indians who drive SUVs—now sold in greater numbers than Maruti Altos and Celerios—cannot change a tyre if it punctures on the way. This does not speak highly of Indians.
The question is, why did Modi make such a comment? Because he considers certain jobs inferior. Ask any highly qualified doctor whether he can perform, say, a brain operation without the assistance of a team of nurses.
When the Prime Minister of India decides to call Muslims “puncture repairers” in a thinly veiled swipe at an entire community, we are not witnessing political rhetoric anymore. We are witnessing the normalisation of bigotry from the highest seat of power.
Modi seldom changes his dress. Who keeps his clothes properly ironed? Are they Muslims? Who cooks food for him? Are they Muslims? Let me reiterate—no job is unimportant.
Modi should see the Russian film Battleship Potemkin, produced in 1925—the year his Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was formed—to understand how every single person employed on a ship, from the captain to the janitor, must work in concert.
When the Great Flood happened, God asked Noah to make his ark with gopher wood, large enough to accommodate every species of animal, bird, and plant. He had to struggle day and night to build it. God could have supplied him with a ready-made ship—like the ready-made Rolex watches a godman used to give his rich devotees who donated millions of dollars, while poor Indians were given vibhuti.
Fixing punctures is better than clanging metallic objects to fight the coronavirus. It is better than hiding the truth about one’s educational qualifications to get jobs for which one is not qualified. It is better than driving bulldozers to flatten the houses of poor people. It is better than building statues at enormous cost only for crows and other birds to sit and defecate on them.
It is better than flaunting trishuls, machetes, lathis, and swords in front of places of worship to terrorise law-abiding citizens. It is better than telling lies—like claiming to have used an electronic camera when such a camera never existed. It is better than using criminal ways to reach America and stay there—only to be caught and sent back to Gujarat.
Words are weapons—sometimes as precise as scalpels, sometimes as blunt as clubs. But when the Prime Minister of India decides to call Muslims “puncture repairers” in a thinly veiled swipe at an entire community, we are not witnessing political rhetoric anymore. We are witnessing the normalisation of bigotry from the highest seat of power.
The remark was not made to praise labour, but to mock identity. It was not a celebration of enterprise, but a sneer at a stereotype. He wasn’t handing out awards for vocational excellence.
He was reducing a vibrant, diverse, and multifaceted community of over 200 million Indians into a single caricature: poor, uneducated roadside mechanics. It is a calculated move—not just to ridicule, but to remind the majority who belongs at the top and who must remain at the margins.
This is not the first time the Prime Minister has played this dangerous game. Over the past decade, his rhetoric has repeatedly suggested that Muslims are either appeased freeloaders or dangerous infiltrators. Now, with elections round the corner in Bihar, where the economic report card is grim and real issues are inconvenient, the age-old strategy is revived: distract and divide.
Let us flip the scenario. What if a Muslim leader were to say, “Hindus are all paan vendors”? Would that pass off as a compliment to small businesses? Would TV studios thump their chests about the dignity of labour? Or would there be national outrage, an arrest under hate speech laws, and possibly a boycott campaign?
The problem is not the occupation. The problem is the intention. Words matter, especially when spoken by those in power. When the most powerful man in India uses caste and communal slurs in public, it licenses others to do the same in private—and often, in violence. The dog whistle becomes a war cry. And it is not accidental.
The BJP and its affiliates are acutely aware of how language shapes perception. Calling Muslims “puncture repairers” is a way of reinforcing the idea that they are at the bottom of the social ladder. It is a message to the upper castes and classes: “Look, we are keeping them where they belong.” It is also a message to Muslims: “You can live here, but don’t dream too big.”
Let us not forget that Muslims have been part of every profession and every sphere of Indian public life. They are scientists, soldiers, scholars, sportspersons, and statesmen. They are doctors, designers, bureaucrats, and businesspeople. From Abdul Kalam to AR Rahman, from Ghulam Ali to Mirza Ghalib, from Shah Rukh Khan to Mohammad Shami—their contributions to India are too vast, too deep, and too valuable to be reduced to a puncture repair kit.
But that’s the game—erase memory, flatten identity, and feed prejudice. A society conditioned to believe that a community is poor and backward is less likely to empathise when that community is lynched, discriminated against, or deprived of rights. That is why such rhetoric is not merely ugly—it is dangerous.
This is not about political correctness. It is about constitutional values. India’s promise to itself, written in the Preamble of the Constitution, is of justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity. When the Prime Minister mocks a minority, he is not just mocking them—he is mocking the Republic itself.
Yes, labour has dignity. But so does identity. If the Prime Minister truly believed in the dignity of labour, he would have launched schemes to uplift street vendors and artisans. Instead, what we see is performative populism, accompanied by a deepening culture of social exclusion.
What India needs today is not dog whistles but dialogues. Not derision but dignity. Not stereotypes but stories—of how people rise above their circumstances, contribute to the country, and seek a better life for their children, irrespective of their religion or profession.
The Prime Minister has a responsibility—not just to his party or his voters, but to every Indian. His words can heal or hurt. In choosing to hurt, he has failed not just Muslims, but the moral compass of the nation.
On the subject of Waqf, Modi knows better than anyone that his buddy and Reliance chief Mukesh Ambani lives in a 27-storey building that was once Waqf property.
I am sure Modi knows how lavish that monstrous house is, because I have seen a picture of him with his hands on Ambani and his wife.
I do not know whether the Prime Minister is aware that the greatest philanthropist in contemporary India is not Ambani or Adani, but Azim Premji of Wipro fame, who belongs to the Muslim community. His philanthropy is not for Muslims alone. His institutions produce technically qualified people who can take the country forward.
In contrast, what has the century-old, three-letter organisation Modi is associated with done for the country? How many medical or engineering colleges have they set up? Their leader went to Kerala and told the people they should remain in villages and never go out, but maintain good family relations. Of course, he would have advised them to take part in the Mahakumbh.
The day Modi made the pejorative comment, his Minister for Minorities, Kiren Rijiju, was in Kerala. He addressed a meeting at Munambam, where about 600 families occupy Waqf land that was originally donated to a Muslim college in Kozhikode. The BJP has been touting the Waqf Act as a cure for the Munambam issue. But when Rijiju was asked specifically which section of the Act would benefit the people of Munambam, he had no answer.
Instead, he advised the people of Munambam to take the case to the Supreme Court. If that was the case, why were BJP leaders projecting the Waqf amendment as a solution? His bluff was called.
I saw the minister enjoying a Kerala meal served on a banana leaf, probably at a five-star hotel. He was accompanied by local BJP leaders. I saw him enjoying karimeen cooked in banana leaf—a true delicacy. Can Rijiju order such a fish in towns like Haridwar, Rishikesh, Kurukshetra, or many places in Gujarat, including Jain-majority Palitana?
When AB Vajpayee spent a few days at Kumarakom in Kerala, he too enjoyed the best karimeen fried for him. Of course, his favourite fish was trout, easily available in Himachal Pradesh. When Modi visited America for the first time, President Barack Obama organised a special vegetarian dinner for him, but he preferred not to eat anything, sipping only water. His loyalists cited it as an act of renunciation; in truth, it was sheer discourtesy.
A college principal in Delhi plasters the walls of a classroom with cow-dung to fight heat! She is a foolish lady who is paid a fancy salary, unlike the Muslim boy who fixes punctures to make a living.
Modi often claims he liberated Muslim women from triple talaq. Can he cite one instance where a Muslim man was convicted for it? Recently, he challenged the Congress party to appoint a Muslim as its president and to field Muslims in 50 percent of Lok Sabha seats.
He should have set an example by accommodating some Muslims in his own Cabinet. Since he didn’t have even one Christian from Kerala, he brought a hardcore BJP man with a Christian name to the Rajya Sabha. Will he be able to field Muslims in even 25 percent of seats in the coming election? He has no such intentions.
I do not know why there is a Minority Affairs Ministry under Rijiju. How is it that the budget for scholarships for minority children is increasingly unavailable? It is better to wind up the department. Of course, it treats Hindus in Kashmir and the Northeastern states as minorities.
Modi’s comment on puncture repairers may seem trivial, even humorous, to his cheerleaders—but it reveals a worldview where citizens are judged not by their values, talents, or contributions, but by religion and class. India cannot progress by diminishing its own people.
A leader must unite, not divide; uplift, not belittle. We must ask ourselves: do we want a country of shared dignity or deepening divisions? In mocking labour and marginalising a community, the Prime Minister may have secured applause at a rally—but in the long arc of history, he has diminished his own stature and that of the office he holds. 
Courtesy: Indian Currents
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The writer is a senior journalist based in New Delhi.
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