New Delhi, April 8: The patriotic calling is keeping Maheish Girri's hands full.
Fresh from solving the mystery of a genuflecting picture of Narendra Modi, the BJP parliamentarian who had first complained about the "anti-national" slogans in JNU has taken up the cause of the "patriotic" students of NIT Srinagar.
This evening, Girri called on Union home minister Rajnath Singh. The MP requested the minister to direct Jammu and Kashmir police to withdraw the FIRs against the students of the NIT and ensure their security.
Law and order is a state subject but Jammu and Kashmir is ruled by a BJP alliance - the possible reason why Girri took his case to the Union home minister.
Girri pointed out that the "nationalist" students were "lathicharged" by the police for chanting "Bharat Mata ki Jai" and "Vande Mataram".
Having raised the "nationalism" pitch, the BJP is finding the NIT controversy unpalatable, especially since it unfolded under the nose of a government partnered by the party.
Parivar affiliates like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Education and Cultural Promotion Trust have demanded an explanation on who ordered the action against the "nationalist" students and why they were "imprisoned" on the Srinagar campus.
Girri shares the concern. "No, the lathicharge on the students was not good. The police will have to shed their old ways of working. Yesterday, our MLA (Ravinder Raina) boycotted a dinner hosted by the chief minister in protest. This would have been unthinkable in the past. Today the BJP is powerful in J&K," the MP told The Telegraph.
For Girri, the display of "nationalism in holding aloft the Tricolour" on the Srinagar campus was the "fallout" of a "passion for patriotism".
BJP veteran Murli Manohar Joshi's Ekta Yatra in 1991-92 - which began in Kanyakumari and culminated in Srinagar with the hoisting of the Tricolour on Lal Chowk with Modi by his side - was to the Delhi MP a "political act". "But the students showed something else," Girri added.
"It was the nationalist in me that pushed me to urge the Prime Minister and the Lok Sabha Speaker to rename Aurangzeb Road after A.P.J. Abdul Kalam," he said.
"Aurangzeb was a cruel emperor. We name our children after good human beings so that they can appreciate the context and emulate the sources as role models. But why should a person like Aurangzeb be there? Kalam Sahab was his exact opposite. I thought that was the right moment to remove Aurangzeb and show our collective respect for our beloved President whom I met many times. The PM and the Speaker obliged me readily," claimed Girri, adding: "I won't ask to remove Aurangzeb from the text books."
The MP trolls those he thought were traducing the Modi government and Modi himself.
His latest target was a television journalist who had allegedly "photo-shopped" (digitally altered) a picture of Modi in Saudi Arabia. It showed the Prime Minister genuflecting before the Saudi king but the journalist later admitted he had modified a picture of Modi touching L.K. Advani's feet.
"Something in the photo's background rang a bell. I checked and discovered that the journalist had replaced Advaniji with the Saudi king. It is an insult to the position of the PM and the country," fumed Girri.
His discovery led to an apology from the journalist, the tweet's deletion and an FIR being lodged by the BJP's IT department in Delhi police's cyber cell.
Girri denied he took the BJP's sanction before embarking on any pet project. "I function individually and the party feels I always take up the right issues. For 42 years I have been like this," he said.
