A tale of two handkerchiefs
Narinder Modi is a
leader of the grandiloquent gesture .Prime ministers of the past, when they won unprecedented victories in the parliamentary polls,
did not make a big song and dance
about it . They went in meekly and when their turn to speak came they
made an acceptance speech without
displaying their histrionic abilities
to leave an indelible mark on the pages of history, be it Indira
Gandhi in 1971 or Rajiv Gandhi in 1984.
Not so friend Narinder Bhai. His first historic moment came in 2014,when he led the BJP to win a massive mandate in the
Lok Sabha. Now the thespian in him decided to make his entry into the Parliament house at the magical moment that would be remembered for a long long
time . It was as if he were
a later day Moses
entering the Dead Sea with his cohorts thus displaying his great powers as the Prophet of Judaism .
When he arrived at Parliament House he stopped at the main entry, a lonely figure chiefly
responsible for the victory . All his
followers also stopped but several steps behind him, thus underlining the undeniable fact of
his leadership . He bowed down and touched the entry point
with his forehead as if he was a devotee seeking the permission of the presiding deity
to enter his divine domain . Close observers would have, if they looked
sharply enough, seen his lips
mumble a mantra to invoke the divine grace on the purely mundane act of entering a place
for transacting political business .
The same gestures of grandiloquence invested two mundane handkerchiefs with
magical bursts of divine energy . First occasion : it was the 15th
of August and Modi was speaking from the ramparts of the Red
fort in his highly clipped language
of RSS worship and playing the tricky
games of Hindutva , while
pretending to extend all the human rights to the non-Hindus.
For the first time the huge audience , impressed with
the Band gala jacket over a 56 inches chest
and an oversized Maratha
turban reminiscent of Chhatrapati
Shivaji were suddenly over shadowed
by a large white handkerchief . This new addition to the Prime
Minister’s sartorial attire was
meant to dry the
huge
beads of perspiration that were constantly forming on the great man’s forehead .This large white handkerchief emerged again and again
in Modi’s protective hands, thus becoming a visible symbol of the State’s
imperial might and supreme
power.
Hardly had the dumb millions recovered from this open display of the supreme exhibition of the Centre’s authority than the 16th August supervened and Modi
was again in his Divine Form, walking beside the gun
carriage of Atal Bihari Vajpayee
. Again the handkerchief
was merely a reminder
of his Viratswarupa
that compelled the incumbent
Prime Minister to walk several
kilometres in hot and humid weather, singing the hymn of
people’s Government.
Thus we have now New
Delhi, the
city of two large white handkerchiefs, ineffectually trying
to conceal the basically
aggressive agenda of Modi’s brand
of politics.
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