The events culminating in Dasara, the Hindu festival that marks the symbolic triumph of good over evil and during which the story of the victory of the heroic and righteous Lord Ram, an avatar of Vishnu, over powerful demon king Ravana, have been a potboiler of a pure political kind this year. The true meaning of religion and spirituality was comprehensively eclipsed as the ruling party sought to politicise it by putting up posters and banners across poll-bound Uttar Pradesh in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi was shown as Ram vanquishing Ravana in the shape of Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif. The obvious backdrop, of course, was the cross-LoC “surgical strike” of a fortnight earlier. Never before has a religious event, that brings forth a wellspring of devotional fervour in India, been made a servant of politics, both domestic and that between nation states.
The Prime Minister said at a public function in New Delhi that this year’s Vijayadasami, the final day of Dasara on which the killing of the demon takes place, was “something special”. No one failed to take the hint. Only days before, in order to sound correct, the Prime Minister had asked his party not to do any partisan chest-thumping over the cross-LoC strike. But he conspicuously failed to get the objectionable posters removed. His own intentions became manifest when he departed from tradition to celebrate Vijayadasami in Lucknow instead of in the national capital. UP Chief Ninister Akhilesh Yadav underlined the political nature of this when he remarked: “If the election was due in Bihar instead of UP, Mr Modi would have celebrated Vijayadasami in Patna.”
In Lucknow, while on the stage, the PM did aarti of Lord Ram and chanted Jai Shri Ram, Jai Jai Shri Ram, Hindu religious chants. This is contrary to the public ethos of the country in which high personages of the State, like the President, PM and Chief Ministers, don’t convert a public forum into a religious one, and lend a sectarian or communal colour to proceedings. In UP, the BJP and RSS had pulled down the Babri Masjid amid chants of Jai Shri Ram back in December 1992.
With crucial Assembly elections just months away, only the blind will fail to see the vulgarisation by the country’s top politicians of Lucknow’s storied Ram Lila, where Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Oudh used to be a regular participant. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who hailed the Prime Minister for the “surgical strike”, used pretty base language to chastise him for politicising the Army’s action. This was of a piece with the political climate of our day. In his Vijayadasami address, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat openly politicised the “surgical strike”. Such tendencies are deplorable.
