Eight years of Moditva and the politics of Hanuman Chalisa

The sight of a saffron flag fluttering in the background as a bunch of youth hammered away at the statue of our first prime minister marked a brand new low even in the “New India” that has emerged post-2014. Surely this incident must be included in the celebrations of eight years of Narendra Modi’s rule, at present being noticed as a interval of “Sewa, Sushaasan aur Gareeb Kalyan” (service, good governance and welfare of the poor). Such a overtly lawless show of hatred for Jawaharlal Nehru is a direct consequence of the means Narendra Modi and the BJP have denigrated the architect of fashionable India in the final eight years.

These youth in Satna may dare to commit this desecration in public, as a result of they knew they lived in a state the place the police reported not simply to the ruling BJP but in addition the whole Sangh Parivar. It’s not as if pre-2014, the Bajrang Dal and the VHP did not get away with flouting the regulation. They nearly at all times did, whichever occasion dominated. The distinction is that right this moment, the police do not simply indulge them; they take orders from them – one other hallmark of the ‘sushaasan’ that distinguishes New India.

Thus it’s the concern of the ABVP that made school heads backtrack final week on their assurances to hijab-wearing college students. The prospectus allowed a headband of the similar color as the uniform, however when the ABVP objects, what worth does a prospectus have? So the hijabi college students had been informed to remain out, not solely of school rooms but in addition of campuses. The similar concern has now pushed an Aligarh school principal to announce {that a} committee will probe how a professor may dare supply namaz in a nook of the school garden. The Bharatiya Yuva Morcha has threatened to recite the Hanuman Chalisa if the professor is not punished.

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The Hanuman Chalisa has now entered the record of Hindu battle cries. For a long time, ‘Vande Mataram’ was used to drive Muslims to show their Indianness. The Ayodhya motion made ‘Jai Sri Ram’ a battle cry; mobs would chant this whereas lynching Muslims. But it’s the Modi period that has added a whole prayer to this record, even when most of these desirous to recite the Hanuman Chalisa in public are diminished to studying it out from a written textual content.

Are Hanuman devotees pleased with this elevated standing of their prayer? It could also be worthwhile asking this of pujaris of our outdated Hanuman temples.

Every day, petitions are being filed to cease Muslims from worshipping at their age-old mosques. Earlier, the 1991 Places of Worship Act could have inhibited these petitioners, however not right this moment. Surely it is a distinctive achievement of the Modi period – to nullify the that means of a regulation that the BJP had opposed from the begin, with out having to repeal it?

There are different achievements that must be included in the celebrations. The removing of two subsidies that made a beneficial distinction in the lives of the poor: the home gasoline subsidy and the senior citizen low cost on rail tickets might be listed as `Gareeb Kalyan’. That this has been finished at a time when the Covid pandemic pushed 230 million residents into poverty is a feat few governments may have pulled off. Credit for this feat must also go to Opposition events; they may have pressured the Centre to revoke these anti-poor measures by avenue protests, however for that, they’d have wanted to really galvanise their grassroots cadre.

The solely cadre proper now that appears perpetually galvanised is that of the BJP. But although final week’s brainstorming session for the 2024 common elections addressed by Amit Shah resolved that the occasion would stage protests in non-BJP-ruled states; the rising value of dwelling just isn’t the form of challenge that the BJP cadre appears to get enthusiastic about. High on their new-found energy as Hindus, they appear to get their thrills from bullying Muslims and Christians. The very presence of these minorities in public areas, the sight of them praying in their very own locations of worship, is what appears to inflame them.

This shift in priorities, when even meals changing into unaffordable would not agitate some as a lot as the sight of a Muslim is a defining attribute of the Modi period.

Way again in 1990, when the Ayodhya motion was at its peak and the BJP’s Sunderlal Patwa was the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, the Bajrang Dal had put up a banner at Bhopal station welcoming guests to the “capital of Hindu Rashtra”. Today, MP’s capital is only one of many cities that may declare this standing. That should rely as the most vital achievement of ‘Moditva’.

(Jyoti Punwani is a journalist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the writer’s personal. They don’t essentially replicate the views of DH.