He is a freelance commentator and writer on politics, economy and security, with a special focus on China’s economy, and has held senior positions in government and industry. But show him the faintest whiff of Hinduism, Hindutva, or a certain shade from the orange end of the colour palette, and he goes ballistic.
I have great regard for him, and I read his articles and commentary on subjects he truly understands with the enthusiasm of a school kid. But what riles me is when he veers off track.
‘India’s Union of States has reached a critical impasse… India was never intended to be a saffron-hued monochromatic state, but a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-lingual state whose diversity made it a nation as never before. Its demographics compound its problems by threatening to swamp the non-Hindi/Hindutva belt into a saffronised dominion,’ he writes in one of his essays.
Mohan G’s latest Facebook discovery: Guruvayur Enclave, a new Army location in Secunderabad, and suddenly, he is giving us a full-blown Kerala Tourism brochure on the famous temple from God’s Own Country. Elephants, floods, Vayu, Brihaspati – all imported into a rant about the Army’s ‘secular ethos’.
RSS footprints everywhere
This is vintage MG. One day, he warns us about the ‘RSS hand in Nepal’, as if every Nepali protester is secretly filing attendance with Nagpur. Another day, he is reminding TV panellists that Modi never gave him a job – a rejection letter that exists only in his imagination. By the weekend, he is recounting how Brahmins once mistook him for one of their own until he revealed he was a Mudaliar, at which point the nation’s caste hierarchy apparently shifted under his chair.
Thread them all together and you get the same theme: MG denied by the Army, denied by Modi, denied by Brahmins. The world conspires, yet Facebook receives the fallout in 1,000-word installments. If there is an ethos at work here, it is not secular or communal. It is pure MG – grievance, with a flourish.
And when called out? MG shoots and scoots. To my one-line reply — ‘A liberandu’s rant’ – which drew likes and laughs, he promptly blocked his posts from me. A man with impressive degrees, achievements, and books to his credit, who feels entitled to lampoon anyone and anything, yet cannot take a counter or a quip.
Shoot, scoot, and block
MG is that rare figure who manages to combine the resume of an Oxford don with the temperament of a WhatsApp uncle. Degrees, books, columns, television appearances – he has them all. What he does not have is a tolerance for replies shorter than 500 words.
On Facebook, he doubles as Kerala Tourism’s unpaid brand ambassador, sprinkling his rants with elephants, floods, and Brihaspati, while warning of RSS footprints in Kathmandu. He has elevated self-pity into a literary genre, recounting how Brahmins once thought him one of their own until he confessed to being Mudaliar, or how Modi cruelly denied him a job he never applied for.
The common thread: the world misunderstands MG, yet he soldiers on – with the stamina of a marathoner and the thin skin of a soap bubble. He can lampoon governments, armies, and ideologies, but when faced with a one-liner on Facebook, his instinct is pure MG: shoot, scoot, and block.
