Karti Chidambaram pens letter to father on birthday; takes dig at BJP govt

On the 74th birthday of former finance minister P Chidambaram, his son Karti wrote a letter to him, mostly taking a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In his letter, Karti criticised the government and its ministers, citing various recent events.

At the beginning of the letter, Karti wished his father and said that "no 56!!! can stop you", a clear jibe at PM Modi. He said the family would have been glad to celebrate the birthday at home, and added "turning 74 is nothing compared to turning 100 days old". (The BJP government just completed 100 days in office). 

P Chidambaram now has access to newspapers and limited television in the prison. Karti, through his letter, got him up to speed with the recent events that his father missed due to unavailability of mass media. He informed that Chandrayaan-2 failed to soft-land on the moon. He wrote that  PM Modi took the opportunity to console K Sivan, the chief of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) which according to him was more of theatrics. Karti mentioned Piyush Goyal's 'Einstein and gravity' gaffe too.
 

He wrote that the government had been celebrating its 100 days in office which was nothing more than celebration of failures. He informed P Chidambaram about the failing economy, car sale slump, Sensex hitting new lows, and more such events. 

He talked about the plight of the people of Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370 and said that he was better off than them despite being in jail. He said that the BJP government had been trying to celebrate a bad patch of their tenure and they could not have found a better time to silence him.

Karti mentioned the turmoil in UK Parliament and how UK PM Boris Johnson took a leaf out of PM Modi's playbook of 'How to deal with Dissent 101' (UK Parliament has been suspended till October 14). The British Parliament speaker had resigned and MPs too spoke in dissent, something which was missing here, he said. Karti said it took great courage to speak up against the siting the government, 'especially the one that wants to send him to Pakistan or, worse, into the arms of CBI and ED'.

He mentioned that the government suffered humiliation after NRC Assam list came out. He talked about the protests in Hong Kong and said that how he (P Chidambaram) would have picked liberty over life. He also quoted BJP MLA Mukt Bihari Verma as saying "the Supreme Court is ours".

He ended the letter with Rafael Nadal's win at the US Open and how he humbly shook hands with his opponent, showing respect. He showed belief in his father saying he was sure that he would come out all guns blazing against the elaborately staged political drama.