BJP rains on its own Yoga Day: Ram Madhav assumes double-delete asana on Ansari

Even as the newspapers today are plastered with photographs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his yoga mat, the government’s biggest PR success is in danger of being derailed. @SardesaiRajdeep tweets “So VP Ansari was not invited to Yoga Day function. Will someone apologise to him?” But love in a time of NDA, it seems, means never having to say Ansari. The government created not one but two Guinness Book-certified world records on International Yoga Day, but journalist @ShivAroor tweeted “@RamMadhavBJP did a double delete-aasan today.” The “double-delete” in question: [caption id=“attachment_2306418” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=" “]  BJP leader Ram Madhav during International Yoga Day at Rajpath. PTI[/caption] BJP general secretary Ram Madhav first tweeted whether the tax-payer funded Rajya Sabha TV decided to “blackout” Yoga Day. And whether Vice President Hamid Ansari gave the jamboree a miss, even though the President showed up for it. Madhav’s second tweet read “Am informed dat d VP was unwell. I withdrew my tweet. My apologies because d institution of VP deserves respect.” Then he deleted both tweets. That sounds like a small wrinkle in a massive show of soft power which Guinness monitor Victoria Tweedy called “the best managed such event I have seen and I have seen a lot of such events, I assure you.” It would be easy to say that Narendra Modi’s critics just latched on to the #Ansari hashtag because they needed to find something to pick on. Except this controversy was entirely generated by the BJP’s own insiders like Ram Madhav with the supporting chorus of its friendly journalists like Swapan Dasgupta. Nobody had spun conspiracy theories about the missing vice president till they started questioning his absence on Twitter. Dasgupta tweeted “All news channels showing Yoga Day, except India’s only taxpayer-funded Left channel: Rajya Sabha TV.” When the channel’s CEO Gurdeep Singh Sapal said Yoga Day was indeed “carried live on RS TV”, Dasgupta merely retorted “Good to know it has made amends.” Love, as we noted, means never having to say Ansari. It’s no secret that there’s little love lost between the NDA government and Hamid Ansari who is ex officio the chairman of the Rajya Sabha. On Republic Day, Ansari’s office had to defend him against charges that he had disrespected the flag by not saluting it during the march past. Ansari’s office had to clarify that protocol demanded those in civil dress stand in attention while the President who is the supreme commander of the armed forces takes the salute. Section VI of the Flag Code states “During the ceremony of hoisting or lowering the flag, or when the flag is passing in a parade or in a review, all persons present should face the Flag and stand at attention. Those present in uniform should render the appropriate salute”. But no matter, Ansari was promptly called “anti-India” and “traitor” on Twitter. Now Ansari has lobbed the ball back into the government’s quote with his office saying “Vice President was not sick. He was never invited for the Yoga programme. The Vice President only attends those programmes in which the minister concerned invites him as per protocol.” Somewhere along the line there was an error of omission or commission. It looks like someone wanted to snub the Vice President or they simply dropped the ball. Either way it reflects badly on the government. Yoga Day was not the BJP’s private party where they could drop people they did not like from the invite list. On top of that the government had gone out of its way to reassure some Muslims that there was nothing unIslamic about yoga. The Bihar Jharkhand Patanjali Yogapeeth announced that Amit Shah would take yoga lessons from a Muslim yoga teacher Mohammad Tamanna in Patna. AYUSH minister Shripad Naik released a book on “Yoga and Islam” put together by the Muslim Rashtriya Manch (a wing of the RSS) that drew parallels between some yoga exercises and namaaz. The government explained to Muslims that it was not mandatory to recite shlokas or do the Suryanamaskar if it went against someone’s religious beliefs. And then by design or accident, the government dissed the vice president who also happens to be the highest-ranking Muslim office-holder in the country. So much for respecting the institution of the VP as Ram Madhav piously tweeted. Hamid Ansari might not be as cooperative a Rajya Sabha chairman as the government wants but he is the Vice President and by not inviting him the government just looks plain petty. During the UPA years the Opposition soured on Ansari because he abruptly adjourned the House before the clock struck midnight when the government was in a sticky position vis-à-vis the Lokpal bill. Opposition parties made it clear that they would not be inclined to support him if he became the nominee for President. The current administration might still be doubtful about Ansari’s loyalties but it would be naïve for a government that’s touchy about how it’s perceived on minority matters to not think this could get quickly acquire a religious colour. By not inviting him or forgetting to invite him and then making an issue about his absence, BJP leaders like Ram Madhav ended up raining on their own parade at a moment when they should have all been basking in the success of a stupendous photo-op. It sounds like a bizarre self-inflicted blow for a government that’s famously fastidious about getting every photo-op just right and every i dotted and every t crossed. That’s why some wonder if there was not some method in the madness. According to journalist @RupaSubramanya there was “something odd about targeting Madhav over non issue” and she bets “her bottom Drachma no TV channel will debate @LalitKModi’s allegation against @arunjaitley in prime time tonight. But will debate Ansari.” By that reasoning, Ram Madhav did not do the “double delete” asana. Instead he fell on the sword aka his yoga mat and performed what could be dubbed a very twisted “deflect-Asana”. Given that #IStandWithAnsari is now trending on Twitter, it’s a high price to pay just to change the conversation.