Dear Mr. Rahul Gandhi: Hindu Temples are not Malls for Shopping Votes
Dear Mr. Rahul Gandhi:
About a week ago, you declared that you are a Shiv Bhakta. Hope you haven’t changed your mind in the interim. I’m asking you because, let’s see, it’s been nearly six months and you still haven’t shown your progress report card about your Upanishad and Gita studies. I ardently hope that your Shiva Bhakti remains intact at least till the people of Gujarat go out to the polling booths.
Frankly speaking, that red Tilaka on your forehead is thoroughly unbecoming. Even as a fashion statement, it doesn’t suit you. However, as yet another display of your moth-eaten party’s election symbolism, it’s deeply offensive not just to me but to millions of Hindus like me. It brings back really ugly memories as we shall see.
I am a devout and deeply-rooted Hindu who considers that my very birth in this soil is in itself sacred. After all, I could’ve been born anywhere but I was born here, in a land whose physical geography is spiritual and while it is ancient, it is also timeless. The record of your party since Independence offends this conception, this emotional and spiritual connect that I have towards this Bhoomi. And it offends the said millions of Hindus.
But even by your own subaltern standards of repeatedly-demonstrated all-round incompetence, just how could you even fantasise that your temple-hopping would convince Gujarati Hindus that you have finally reformed and become an actual Hindu? Really, whose idea was it? Oh wait…Pidi…
But you see what your party has done for the best part of these seventy years? I could’ve simply said “Gujaratis” above but your brand of politics forced me to hyphenate since that’s the only language your party understands. But really, my heart goes out to you. You still don’t get the actual reason your party exploded into a colossal wreck in that disastrous May of 2014, and has now become a political pariah.
If you had, you wouldn’t have abused your own country’s Prime Minister, you wouldn’t have complained about the policies of your own nation on foreign soil as recently as in September this year. Think about the kind of message that this sends to the folks in the US and on the global stage. When was the last time any US leader came here and abused their own President and their Government’s policies? Think about the anticipatory wet dreams that the war-mongering Pakistani Jihadi political establishment would be having, praying, “yaar, yeh banda kab Hindustan ka PM banega?” (When will this guy become India’s Prime Minister?)
Just think about the nonchalant manner in which you not-so-obliquely affirmed that you were a dynast, and that that’s how “most of the country runs like.”
Exactly when will you realise that invoking your lineage to win votes stopped working permanently? Mr. Rahul Gandhi, there are only so many family jewels that you can pawn. You seem to think that it’s a gift that keeps on giving.
While we’re on the subject of your temple-hopping and family jewels, why don’t you also tell the world what your hoary ancestors did to temples?
Let’s obviously begin with Nawab Jawaharlal Nehru. Mr. Rahul Gandhi, would you like to narrate what he tried to do to one of the most sacred Hindu temples, the grand Somanath Temple in the same Gujarat?
“I was clear in my mind that the temple of Somnath was not just an ancient monument; it lived in the heart of the whole nation and its reconstruction was a national pledge.”
That was K M Munshi, another towering Gujarati with a glorious record of lifelong service to the nation. What place does the official history of the Congress party accord to him, Mr. Rahul Gandhi? Would you admit that by the warped definitions given by your own party, Sri Munshi was a rabid Hindu communalist?
1. I don’t like your trying to restore Somnath. It is Hindu revivalism.
2. I confess that I do not like the idea of your associating yourself with a spectacular opening of the Somnath Temple. This is not merely visiting a temple, which can certainly be done by you or anyone else but rather participating in a significant function which unfortunately has a number of implications.
- Nehru to K M Munshi.
- Nehru’s letter to President Rajendra Prasad.
Why don’t you also talk about how your grandmother Smt Indira Gandhi was stopped from entering the Garba Griha of one of the holiest of Hindu temples, Puri Jagannatha? All of the mighty power of the Iron of Lady of India was futile in the face of a mere priest of this temple. She had to turn back. Do read up, Mr. Rahul Gandhi.
This episode was perhaps the last recorded victory of spiritual power over temporal power in recent history.
Of course, you must definitely know the historical sacrilege she committed by ordering the army to desecrate the Amritsar Golden Temple to flush out Bhrindanwale, the same crackpot she had nurtured into a full-blown monster.
And then there’s your own father, Rajiv Gandhi. It was during his tenure that the complete extent of your party’s double-standard and all-round bankruptcy burst to the fore. His regime demonstrated the true measure of the hold that an assortment of harebrained but dangerous Mullahs and Imams had over the Government.
You see, Mr. Rahul Gandhi, your father shouldn’t have tried the Salman Rushdie, Shah Bano and the Ram Mandir stunt at the same time. That was the real turning point which began and accelerated the rapid alienation of the Hindu vote from your party. If this was the political side, these same stunts changed the course of the 20th Century civilizational and cultural history of India.
And now, do you really hope that your phoney temple-hopping and fake Bhakti will actually get Hindu votes for your party? In Gujarat, of all places?Remember how your party’s friends in the media and academia back then had copiously written about how Gujarat was a Hindutva laboratory and how it would hurt the BJP, etc? Today you’re seeking the same Hindu vote in the same laboratory with an anxious desperation bordering on vulgarity.
Contemplate on why this happened, Mr. Rahul Gandhi. Oh wait…
No wonder that folks in Gujarat aren’t amused — much less believe in — with your temple and assorted I’m-a-Hindu-too antics. Stop being frozen in a time warp Mr. Rahul Gandhi. You can’t treat Hindu temples and institutions as shopping malls where you can buy Hindu votes using cynical symbolism.
Here’s a small, real-time sample of what ensues when you try such stunts.
Postscript
One of the recurrent motifs in our Puranic lore is the ceaseless and seemingly endless stories of newer and newer Rakshasas who engage in hundreds of years of arduous Tapasya and ultimately obtain boons which to their mind makes them invincible and deathless but ultimately consumes them.
The genius of this motif lies in the subtle manner in which an extremely profound truth is couched in utter simplicity. Understandable by, appealing to and enjoyed even by three-year olds.
Assuming that you’re still going to your Gita and Upanishad classes, I humbly and most sincerely urge you to learn these stories as well.
