Giriraj Singh to Pravin Togadia: Modi's bhakts do him no favours

To restate a popular adage, with great adulation, comes great embarrassment. BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is learning this bitter lesson thanks to his fan-boy Giriraj Singh's enthusiastic declaration that all Modi’s critics should be packed off to Pakistan. Now there is no evidence in either Pakistan’s contemporary politics or cultural history to suggest that the country is concerned about or would welcome vast droves of Modi haters, but Singh is not one to be bothered about such minor details. Despite being rapped by the BJP top brass, the Bihar BJP leader reiterated his stand that anyone not in awe of the Gujarat CM’s charms ideally should live in the “enemy country”. Given that Modi himself hit out at Arvind Kejriwal as a ‘Pakistani agent’, Singh may think he is in august company – blissfully unaware of the spate of Modi interviews trying to unveil a softer, cuddlier Modi who just wants everyone to get along. Singh isn’t the only one who doesn’t seem to have got that memo. [caption id=“attachment_1489333” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Narendra Modi. Agencies.[/caption] Just when the BJP was furtively trying to douse the fire sparked by Singh, VHP chief Pravin Togadia decided to do his bit for the bigotry brigade in Bhavnagar, Gujarat. The Times of India reports: “Togadia joined a group of VHP and Bajrang Dal members on a street protest outside a house purchased by a Muslim businessman near Meghani Circle. While saffron groups have been regularly organizing ‘Ram Dhuns’ and ‘Ram Darbars’ to thwart such deals, Togadia went a step further by asking the protesters to take complete control of the house and put a ‘Bajrang Dal’ board on it."  Not being one to leave a job half-done, Togadia directed his gang of supporters that if the Muslim property owners don’t relent in 48 hours, they should be showered with stones, tyres, rotten tomatoes and all such weapons that can help save ‘Hindu’ land from Muslim land-sharks probably. If this wasn’t bad enough for Modi – who hardly wants even an indirect reminder of the 2002 riots playing out in his backyard – Togadia made sure to underline that association, saying, “I have done it in the past and Muslims have lost both property and money.” Of course, in the case of Togadia, who is hardly a Modi friend, embarrassing the CM is exactly what he had in mind. All this while the BJP is doing its very best to airbrush even the hint of ’loh purush’ out of public view, and with an earnestness that now borders the absurd.  The latest being the decision toedit lines recited by Modi out of the BJP’s poll anthem. A BJP leader told The Times of India, “The suggestion that the nation faces a threat to its existence is unwarranted. Getting Modi to speak the lines was also not a good decision as he comes through in ‘hard’ tones.” All through the election season, the ghosts of Modi’s Hindutva past have come back over and again to haunt just when least convenient. The Har Har Modi slogan, for example, drew a snub from the  Shankaracharya of Varanasiwho  took exception to Modi’s fans twisting the popular chant ‘Har Har Mahadev’ into a fanboy chant. He said, “People say no one can stop Modi. But if these activities continue, God will stop Modi.” The BJP immediately released an advisory asking fans to not use the refrain. However, undaunted by the party diktat, Modi’s fans then modified a hymn used to worship Goddess Durga to pay obeisance to Modi. Times of India reports: “Coinciding with Navratri beginning on March 31, a verse from Durga Saptasati has been modified as ‘Yo Modi sarvabhuteshu, rashtrarupen sansthitah, namastasmay, namastasmay, namastasmay, namo namah.’ Released in posters with photographs of Modi in a saffron background posing with a victory sign, the slogan roughly translate into, ‘Modi, who resides in every human being in the form of ‘rashtra’ (nation), I salute him again and again.’  It’s a corruption of the original, ‘Ya devi sarvbhutesu matri rupen sansthitah, namastasye namastasye namastasye, namo namah (the Goddess who is omnipresent as the personification of the universal mother, I bow to her again and again).” With sacrilegious friends like these who generate bad PR, Modi certainly doesn’t need enemies. Another fan base that is proving to be less than useful is the infamous online Modi brigade, which is now best know for their penchant for vitriolic rhetoric. Recently, video jockeys of a music channel, a popular music director and hordes of other popular celebrities on Twitter, exhorted fellow users to retweet every abusive tweet directed towards them by enamoured Modi fans. The BJP slogan may now be the all-inclusive “ Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas (With Everyone, Development for all), but Modi’s supporters are still chanting from his old political playbook. And they’re likely to get all the more louder if and when their man Modi becomes Prime Minister.