Yogi Adityanath steadily replacing Modi as Hindutva icon to
By Sushil Kutty
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Mandi MP Kangana Ranaut is facing greater heat in the Himachal Pradesh Assembly after the BJP pushed her under the bus for talking out of turn on the farmers’ agitation which rankles as one of the most abject U-turns of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his second prime ministerial term. The BJP doesn’t want to be reminded of Modi losing face.
Whatever will then happen to ‘Modi Hai toh Mumkin Hai’? Kangana Ranaut must have meant well for the Modi regime but Modi has changed since June 4, especially after Congress MP Rahul Gandhi became LoP. Modi became Prime Minister for a third time with the BJP getting 240 Lok Sabha seats, compared to the INDI-Alliance’s scorecard of 234, and yet both the BJP and PM Modi have been behaving like total losers even as Rahul Gandhi with 99 seats lords it over the Lok Sabha.
Is there a crisis of no-confidence in the saffron party? Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who achieved the Nehruvian-Gandhian record of three straight terms as Prime Minister, has been behaving like a rookie first-time MP consigned to the back-most of the back-benches. Mind you, Modi has just begun a third term and he has to complete the term to stand alongside Nehru and Indira Gandhi.
So, is Modi psychologically-compromised and severely short in confidence? The colossal failure of not getting “abki baar 400 paar” must be hurting Modi more than what he is letting out. Signs of the swagger are still there, but LoP Rahul Gandhi says there is a stoop to Modi’s shoulders! Throughout the 2024 Lok Sabha elections campaign, Modi kept talking of “abki baar 400 paar”. The 400+ failure must be a drag on Modi’s train of thoughts.
Result: Anything and everything causes Prime Minister Narendra Modi to panic and the Bharatiya Janata Party goes into a tailspin. So much so, there is no need for the Opposition to bring in a motion of no-confidence. It is just a matter of time before the Bharatiya Janata Party MPs staged a walkout from the Lok Sabha and not make a return till after the next Lok Sabha elections.
Also, Narendra Modi in his third term as Prime Minister is heading a U-turn coalition. The number of U-turns the Modi-led NDA government has staged in the short time since the government was formed is a scorecard that speaks of a sorry story. Anything out of kilt and the Modi government panics like a squirrel at the sight of a sloth! Even something as ordinary and routine as an actor-turned-Member of Parliament telling “the miserable truth” gives the BJP and PM Modi the heebies-jeebies.
The farmers’ agitation over the three “black laws” could have created a “Bangladesh-like situation” was what Kangana Ranaut said and the BJP couldn’t digest the thought first voiced by Congress leaders and farmer leader Rakesh Tikait. The BJP’s “powerful” party Chief Jagat Prakash Nadda hauled up Ranaut and gave her Nupur Sharma’s halo, saying Ranaut should have kept her yap shut. Nupur was a party spokesperson and the BJP threw her out the bus window for saying something which has been said millions of time.
Does the BJP not cotton to strong women, ones with a voice of their own? It must be the RSS! Nupur Sharma went under the skin of Prime Minister Modi and she was reduced to the status of a political untouchable for upsetting Modi’s ‘Gulf’ applecart with a factual yet reckless statement. Now, its Ranaut because she is a threat to Modi’s international image of a “pacifist and a Gandhian”. The reality is, Modi is always running away from women with rare exceptions, like Smriti Irani and Nirmala Sitharaman.
Mandi MP Kangana Ranaut is Sadhvi Pragya and Nupur Sharma rolled into one. Why was Kangana even chosen for an MP seat in the first place? PM Modi, who craves the label of a ‘good guy’, has been making lots of bad decisions destined for the U-turn. The latest was the U-turn on lateral entry into the UPSC. There were other U-turns including the one on the Broadcast Bill and the Wakf Board Act Amendment Bill 2024 and these aren’t destined to be the last.
The real story is, the BJP is haemorrhaging supporters, voters who are pissed off with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s perceived pusillanimity, and his timorous U-turns on issues which take forward the Hindutva agenda. Modi’s agenda is international recognition for himself. The “Bangladesh situation” is not his concern for the time-being. Modi never was the ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’ and he is now being compared to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath with the Yogi overtaking Modi in the “strongman said it straight” category.
The Yogi’s “batenge toh katenge” rhetoric has taken him past Modi in the “Who is more Hindutva?” column. Modi made his first U-turn when he indulged in his own brand of Muslim-appeasement after coming to power in 2014 with a string of promises to his core vote-bank of Hindus. Today, 10 years later, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has become the Hindutva challenger to Modi. The battle is between Modi’s preference for Pasmanda Muslims versus the Yogi’s stark Hindutva line.
To be honest, Yogi Adityanath has left Narendra Modi behind in the popularity stakes in the Hindi-heartland. And BJP Chief Ministers are toeing the Yogi line. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is challenging Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav as well with the Hindutva plank against the duo’s PDA and Caste Census planks. Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a U-turn and ditched his core Hindu vote-bank. Modi was given two majorities to make good the BJP’s election promises but he squandered both majorities and chose to stray and lose himself in the Muslim ghetto!
Has the Prime Minister learned his lesson? No, ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’ hasn’t slipped out of Modi’s mind. Modi spoke of “mangalsutra” and of “Muslim reservation” only when he saw defeat in the Lok Sabha elections staring him in the face. It was only then that he remembered his core vote-bank of Hindus. By the way, the Himachal Pradesh Assembly, consisting of both Congress and BJP MLAs, has adopted a resolution to take Kangana Ranaut to task for her anti-farmer comments. (IPA Service)