One of the myths about Prime Minister Narendra Modi is that he uses religion to make politics. In fact, it’s the opposite. Modi uses politics for religious purposes. While in Varanasi yesterday, inaugurating the Kashi-Vishwanath corridor, Modi was seen performing elaborate Hindu religious ceremonies. This came naturally to him. That’s because he’s like a Hindu leader who happens to be in politics. And his lifelong ambition seems to be to unite the Hindus and empower them so that they are never ruled by other religions as in the past, first by Islam and then by Christianity. catholic. One may differ from his interpretation of history, and one may call it false consciousness, but that is it.
So unlike my liberal friends who feel marginalized in society today, I’m not surprised to see Modi, taking a constitutional position in a democracy. secular, in which religion and state must be separate, behave like a Hindu leader performing religious ceremonies. The Indian Express in its editorial showed that the entire set of Kashi was a radical change. It is very implicit that it is not good for the country and says that the Opposition is not doing enough to stop the BJP. In a way, it blames opposition parties, including Congress, for the situation the country is in. This is again the result of not understanding the ideology that has driven Modi and defined his politics. India did not have a definite turning point yesterday and ‘fundamental change’ did not happen when the Kashi-Vishwanath corridor opened. It happened when the country gave an absolute majority in 2014 to Modi. Whatever happened after that in the nation-state of India was logical progression.
PM Modi prays at Kashi Vishwanath đền temple
The riots of 2002 established Modi’s credibility as a staunch Hindu leader, willing to go any way to teach a lesson to members of other religions who dare to challenge the community. Hindu coin. As Chief Minister of Gujarat, he took every opportunity to strengthen that image. It is no coincidence that he publicly refused to wear a Muslim cap at a public event. He also frequently used anti-Muslim phrases to polarize voters and win elections. But when he became the 2014 BJP Prime Minister’s candidate, he was uncertain whether on a national level he would be accepted as a Hindu leader or whether his brand of politics would be welcome outside of Gujarat. .
So the world saw another Modi. This is a leader accused of bigotry and socialism by his opponents, presenting himself as a visionary of bringing the country back to greatness again as his forte. Overnight, the ‘Gujarat Model’ became dominant in the political lexicon. The image of a growth-obsessed man is carefully presented and it instills in the national consciousness that he is not what the Opposition is branding him for.
Modi has made the best use of development, a secular value in a secular democracy, as political currency; His genius lies in the fact that he allowed this secular value to overwhelm his image of a Hindu leader. But once he reached his peak, he used every tool of his power to craft a story about the country in need of a religious awakening, with the Hindus needing to assert their dominance over the world. their own country. In this effort, he ruthlessly used TV as a media because it magnified the diverse visual impact on Hindu grandeur. The live broadcast of the inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and now in Kashi was part of that design.
Prime Minister Modi takes a holy dip in the Ganga River
For Modi, Ayodhya and Kashi are not politics but a matter of belief. It was an exercise to correct the mistakes of history as he was aware of it. It is an attempt to teach a lesson to the Muslims that India is no longer a country where their power will run disproportionately; India is mainly a Hindu country, and the Muslims have no choice but to accept that fact and live with the guilt that their ancestors committed great sins in the country. this. The reference to Aurangzeb in Kashi is intentional. Shiva-ji is used as a metaphor for the assertion and ascension of Hindu power. This fascinates a section of Hindus as Modi intuitively takes them on a pilgrimage to the past.
As I was researching my last book, Rashtra of the Hindus, I was amazed to learn that many of the big names in academia and the press don’t understand RSS, don’t read their original articles, and have a very superficial knowledge of their ideology. It is no coincidence of history that many senior intellectuals and journalists from the liberal school of thought did not see how the world would turn out when Modi became Prime Minister. They are seen singing paeans to Modi. And not surprisingly, many of them later said they regretted supporting Modi. They do not understand that it is not about Modi, but about RSS and its Hindutva ideology, which has historically defined a 1,200-year religious war with Islam, and that this war will continue. continued until Islam was destroyed in India. For them, the partition of India is part of Jihadi design. Kashmir, in their opinion, is the unfulfilled agenda of the Muslim forces. The government at the center is not there to rule, or provide development for millions, but it is there to seek revenge for division and for the past. Frequent references to ‘internal enemies’ are a pointer in that direction.
Despite the Places of Worship Act 1991, Mathura .’s Krishna issue Janmabhoomi The temple is being raked up again with lawsuits going to the Supreme Court. The message was simple – that Ayodhya and Kashi had been restored by the Hindus, now only Mathura remained. Of course, this whole exercise is linked to the UP board election. BJP is in deep trouble in UP. Yogi Government inactivity is a threat to UP’s victory. Modi’s actions in Kashi are also an exercise in reminding Hindu voters that the BJP government needs to free Mathura from the clutches of the past.
The story of the BJP is that the construction of the Ram Temple and the Kashi corridor was only possible because there was a BJP government in the center and a BJP government in Lucknow. Of course, that’s just politics. But in RSS’s scheme of things, politics is just the driving force, it’s not the main exercise. Religion is the main driving force and the primary goal. RSS initially believed that a social movement was the way to rebuild a new Hindu society, but after Gandhi’s assassination, when RSS was banned, it realized that politics was essential to protect their social movement, and thus, Jan Sangh was born. Those who know RSS know that Modi and the BJP see the re-creation of Hinduism as the goal; Politics is just the periphery, the core is religion.
(Ashutosh is the author of ‘Hindu Rashtra’ and Editor, satyahindi.com.)
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