PM Modi meets his mother, pens blog on her birthday

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday met his mother at her residence in Gandhinagar as she entered the 100th year of her life, and wrote a blog post dedicated to her.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday met his mother at her residence in Gandhinagar as she entered the 100th year of her life, and wrote a blog post dedicated to her.

(PIVB)

Giving details about his childhood and his family, the PM said that his early years and his relationship with his parents shaped his personality. “In my mother’s life story, I see the penance, sacrifice, and contribution of India’s matrushakti (women’s power). Whenever I look at my mother and crores of women like her, I find there is nothing that is unachievable for Indian women,” Modi said in the blog post, which is available in several regional languages besides Hindi and English. “Far beyond every tale of deprivation, is the glorious story of a mother, far above every struggle, is the strong resolve of a mother.”

He referred to 2022 as a special year as his late father, too, would have completed his centenary this year.

Referring to his mother as a simple but extraordinary person, the Prime Minister credited his parents for his outlook and achievements. “I have no doubt that everything good in my life, and all that is good in my character, can be attributed to my parents,” he said.

Their lives were instructive in helping me inculcate values and understand the importance of hard work, Modi said.

The PM offered her sweets, washed her feet and took her blessings. He also gifted her a shawl and chatted with her while sitting at her feet, video footage of the meeting released by officials showed.

“If I look back at my parents’ lives, their honesty and self-respect have been their biggest qualities. Despite struggling with poverty and its accompanying challenges, my parents never left the path of honesty or compromised on their self-respect,” he wrote in the blog. “They had only one mantra to overcome any challenge – hard work, constant hard work!”

He recalled how his mother, who lost her mother to the Spanish Flu, was raised in poverty and deprivation, but overcame challenges with calm and fortitude.

“In Vadnagar, our family used to stay in a tiny house, which did not even have a window, let alone a luxury like a toilet or a bathroom,” Modi wrote. “We used to call this one-room tenement with mud walls and clay tiles for a roof, a home. All of us – my parents, my siblings and I, stayed in it.”

Intimate details of how the household was run, and how his mother worked hard, taking up odd jobs to sustain the family and supplement the family income, are shared in the blog.

This is not the first time the Prime Minister has given a glimpse into the hardships that his mother faced. In 2015, while attending a town hall meeting at the Facebook campus in San Jose, Modi became emotional while recalling how his mother had to help sustain the family by cleaning dishes at neighbouring houses.

In 2018, while talking about the government’s Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana welfare scheme that provides subsidised cooking gas to poor families, Modi said he remembered how his mother had to struggle with smoke while cooking with firewood and cow dung.

The blog also encapsulates the bond that Heeraben Modi shares with the Prime Minister. When he chose to leave home, it was his mother who supported his decision and helped his father make peace with it. His father was “disheartened” by his choice of leaving home, Modi said.

“Since childhood, I have noted that mother not only respects others’ choices but also refrains from imposing her preferences,” he wrote. “In my own case especially, she respected my decisions, never created any hurdles, and encouraged me. Since childhood, she could feel that a different mindset grew inside me.”

He credited his mother for inspiring him to take up social causes and for fuelling the desire to help the poor. “Mother has always inspired me to have a strong resolve and focus on garib kalyan (welfare of the poor),” he said and recalled how after he was nominated to become chief minister of Gujarat, she told him to “never take a bribe.”

Her absence from public events, discipline and self-sufficiency, even at an advanced age, have been captured in the blog. “She keeps assuring me that I should not worry about her and lose focus on the larger responsibilities,” the Prime Minister wrote.