By Sushil Kutty
Is India awash in religion? India cannot help itself. Religion is so mixed with politics and everyday life in India that it bristles. This, despite the country’s apex court asserting in1994 that mixing religion with politics was fraught with danger. Today, the same Supreme Court has by far a far more liberal attitude on mixing politics with religion, which the international media labels as “Modi’s illiberalism”.
Come to think of it, India has become one huge temple-town and much of the global media cannot take this transformation without panic showing. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself is leading what can be called the ‘Make The Temple Great Again’ movement currently unfolding in “Bharat”, much like Donald Trump’s MAGA in the United States.
In fact, for yet another time, Trump and Modi are being spoken of in the same breath and this is disturbing stout hearts. And “anybody heard of Ram?” is not asked; for, everybody — from the squirrel to the fish — has heard of Ram, thanks to the opposition INDIA bloc, which has made famous the story of Ramayana linking it not just with the BJP but also with that of the fortunes of the opposition alliance.
India’s opposition leaders have virtually adopted Ramayana’s epic hero as their own. It is uncanny, this affinity for Ramayana among secular opposition politicians. And everybody thought Congress leader and ex-Rajasthan Chief Minister was the magician. That mantle now rests easy on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s grey head. The question plaguing level-heads: Has the opposition INDIA bloc forgotten the demolished 450-year-old mosque which — if 200 million believers are to be believed — awaits resurrection at the same spot where it was reduced to dust?
Fact is, where Ram was born has become an international hotspot and India has a Hindu evangelical Prime Minister under whose leadership Indian Muslims are being exhorted to “show big heart” — give up their claims on other temples allegedly buried beneath other mosques. Only then will Modi’s ‘Make The Temple Great Again’ movement take on the epic proportion it aims for.
Modi is spreading the MTTGA movement through ‘Ram Rajya’, which is taking shape across the landscape, much to the delight of Hindutva folks who refuse to see the clear distinction between Hindu and Hindutva. In fact, Hindutva got a big boost only after Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor and Salman Khurshid warned of the yawning gap between Hindu and Hindutva.
Today, in north India at least — in the reviled “gaumutra states” — Hindutva blurs with ‘Hindu’ and nobody can stop the temple movement. Not when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is breathing fire into temples with fire-breathing speeches and, “Lo Behold”, the opposition parties are also “Ram-May”. The question is, what is ‘Ram Rajya’ other than ‘Hindu Rashtra’?
If Prime Minister Narendra Modi manages to secure 400+ Lok Sabha seats before this May, it will be axiomatic of a “Hindu Rashtra”. With that kind of brute majority, the rest of the RSS manifesto would be enacted quicker than the crow flies in a straight line. And considering the extent and spread of the temple movement, the time is nigh.
Some global media are calling the temple movement Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “triumphant moment”. For, which other world leader — a bona fide head of state — can breathe “life” in an idol for a billion and more people to worship? Can Joe Biden, can Vladimir Putin, can Xi Jinping? Why, can even Kim Jong Un, the North Korean dictator with the chubby cheeks, breathe life in a stone idol and proclaim the stone ‘God Almighty’?
The reality is, there are degrees and degrees of authoritarianism and Prime Minister Narendra Modi allegedly practices one that is in a class all its own, in a class all his own. Post-January 22, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be the ‘Father of God’, with the temple consecrated and the temple movement on its way to declare India ‘Hindu Rashtra’ under the benign tenets of ‘Ram Rajya, which have the “blessings of the Constitution”.
Modi will also launch the BJP’s election campaign with the unsaid “by this time 2025, India will be ‘Hindu Rashtra’ if the BJP gets the brute majority Modi expects to garner in the 2024 general elections”. Modi has asked Indians to light lamps on January 22 to celebrate the temple movement to commemorate, ahead of time, Modi’s triumphant return to power for a third straight term.
By then would all the “secular demons” be slayed? There are people who insist that “only 80% of Indians are Hindu”, so nary a worry should darken the brows of non-Hindus. There are also large numbers of Hindu Indians for whom ‘Make The Temple Great Again’ does not count. These are the eternal optimists, for whom the temple is not axiomatic of victory. The ‘Shankaracharyas’ are the leading lights of this set. Most opposition leaders — who have no reason to flatter Narendra Modi — have found their own temples to lay siege to.
As a last resort, India’s combined opposition is banking on the 6000-km cross-country ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’ of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to blunt the dangers of ‘Make The Temple Great Again’. It is rare, indeed, to have a religious shrine as the enemy. But, then, this is ‘Incredible India’ aiming for ‘Hindu Rashtra’ in the guise of ‘Ram Rajya’. (IPA Service)
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