Not since Indira Gandhi took a packed Calcutta Maidan by storm by welcoming Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in an inappropriate red-bordered garad draped in pleatless Bengali style has attire proclaimed such cataclysmic political change. Not to be left out of the dressing game, Narendra Modi’s Bengali invocation of poriborton ensured that nobody missed the message of which his bundled dhoti was the medium. The pronunciation may have fallen short of total conviction but, then, regime change 2026 is not quite as dramatic as 1971. Both times, however, the self-made 'onlie begetter' made sure that the world knew that she/he worshipped only at the feet of the maker.
The two images overlap in this hour of jubilation for most and lamentation for some with an embattled figure at the heart of the argument. Abanindranath Tagore’s gouache Bharat Mata not only gave restive India a mother goddess in 1905 but, perhaps anticipating future demand, conveniently draped her in today’s fashionably rediscovered saffron. Actually, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay had already pre-empted the title role and bestowed it on Banga Mata in Anandamath, where "Vande Mataram" features, a few decades before Abanindranath’s painting. That adds another controversy to disputes over whether the song honours the king-emperor or the Almighty and the deification of idols although analysts might rule out rivalry since Mother and Daughter extol the same femininity.
It might even be suggested that two female divinities enormously enlarge the scope for religious commerce not so much for the sangh, which still carries a hint of its original austerity, but for the rollicking-frolicking rapacity of sangh parivar stalwarts. The Wikipedia search engine says that the umbrella covers more than 2,500 organisations with holy pretensions. With murderers and marksmen on both sides amidst saffron tilaks and 'Har Har Modi' mingling with 'Jai Shri Ram', catering to the appetite of criminals like those who felled Suvendu Adhikari’s hapless aide must be among the state’s foremost concerns.
Disciplining anyone won’t be easy in this uncertainty where yesterday’s killer is today’s worshipper. Robust defenders of cows are ever ready to pounce on gluttonous Muslims accused of wallowing in beef. Their lusty cousins are bent on romancing Hindu girls (love jihad). Daredevils on bikes disdain helmets and profess contempt for all traffic rules because they know they can get away with it. I first heard of this Achilles' heel of the justice system in the context of the Valentine’s Day controversy which centred on three main points. First, the festival was unpatriotic because it had been imported from the West. Second, being peddled and popularised by multinational corporations, it offended small and medium organisations. Third, the capitalist sellers raked in crores. Fairness demands admitting a fourth objection voiced by an organisation called Hindu Munnani whose spokesman declared, “We totally oppose Valentine’s Day because it is not part of our culture.” What is? Raj Narain, the maverick princeling who worsted Indira Gandhi, had an answer. “Drop the tie and wear the loin cloth”, he advised mockingly. “Otherwise, Indian culture will die!”
What is this ethos that needs hothouse protection to survive? The answer leads to something that concerns everyone: what will life be like under the new dispensation? The question is especially relevant because despite Bangladesh’s unconcealed anxiety about the rise of Hindu nationalism in Bengal, no reliable pointers to the future are discernible as yet while yesterday’s Trinamool patriots (secular revolutionaries of the Seventies) hastily change their colours. A political transformation of this magnitude cannot take place without massive shifts in the surrounding architecture. Those who joke that Bengal’s election campaign had turned a plate of fish into a political battlefield should recall the old Israeli joke about gullible Arabs believing that a map on the Knesset walls shows the ultimate territorial aspirations of the Jewish State. There is no such map of course, at least not in the Knesset, but Israel’s inexorable advance on adjoining territories makes one suspect that the map is graven in Zionist hearts and minds, driving the quest for an ever-larger Jewish homeland.
So, too, with food taboos. Bengal’s now toppled chief minister had reportedly claimed that if the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power, it would ban or severely restrict the consumption of fish and meat. True or false, the warning that the saffron party should be sent packing, lock, stock and barrel, was a source of great hilarity among dyed-in-the-wool saffron-wallahs. A comparison of the two situations justified laughing at those simple Arabs for making a to-do over a non-existent map while the ground under their feet was literally whittled away. Driving home the point, Anurag Singh Thakur, formerly a Union minister from Himachal Pradesh with a clutch of portfolios, gave public demonstrations of eating fish-and-rice to prove that the land of the brave and the home of the free has no dietary restrictions. Others dismissed Mamata Banerjee’s claim as "fake, malicious and motivated propaganda".
But there are other ways of shaping behaviour, other pointers to social change. Passing a storage centre for electronic voting machines just before the balloting, I saw a jawan among the uniformed servicemen milling around with a tag above his right breast pocket inscribed 'Jai Bhagwan'. It was an innocuous, even laudable, sign testifying to the wearer’s god-fearing spirit. But which god? A military friend explained that the wearer could not have been a regular soldier. He was probably in a paramilitary organisation that allowed private beliefs. The other sign of things to come showed Thakur in the full flow of Lok Sabha oratory, a smear of vermilion between his eyebrows. That, too, would be perfectly acceptable as a symbol of personal belief but implies some measure of official approval when sported by an officer of State on a public occasion while performing a public duty. Faced with either scene, a Jawaharlal Nehru might have exploded in wrath and laid about him with his cane. An Indira Gandhi would probably have looked the other way. Trinamool’s short-term transactional relationship with voters allowed such bargains.
It might have been different if the parties concerned had subscribed to a creed. But whatever rituals obliging temple babas might serve up to indulge politicians who aspire to be more than they are, Hindutva is neither religion nor ideology. There are no rules graven in stone, no abiding conviction. Despite Modi’s obeisances at shrines and the crowns that sometimes surmount his turbans, there is no prescribed regalia or form of worship. A saffron tilak for Raja Rammohan Roy is heresy. The TV coverage suggests that these gatherings are more social than devotional. Odisha’s demand to strip Digha’s Rs 250-crore Jagannath temple of the 'Dham' in its name indicates temporal rivalry. The only remotely theological exchange I have ever heard in a puja pandal was as a child in the Ekdalia Evergreen Club when an elderly worshipper asked the priest the name of Saraswati’s spouse. My Muslim butcher tells me that the BJP’s elevation means more beef exports to China. Leaving aside vote theft allegations, people chose the BJP not because it promised bhorosa instead of bhoy but because of the goodies the advertisements shrieked about — Rs 3,000 monthly for women, a crore of new jobs, lavish unemployment benefits, self-employment opportunities, and much more.
Trinamool also made similar promises. It kept its word too up to a point, especially after decades of Left Front stagnation. But as investment fizzled out and fresh capital wasn’t forthcoming, as Indonesia’s Salim Group followed Tata’s, and venality and arrogance replaced courtship, Covid and its aftermath exposed the infrastructure’s inability to absorb unemployed manpower. Mamata Banerjee has paid the price for not keeping Trinamool’s part of the bargain as the BJP will also have to do one day unless it can fulfil its transactional commitment. Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi reflect two sides of the same coin.