Both BJP and INDI Alliance leaders should avoid personalised agenda
By Sushil Kutty
No family for Narendra Modi' sounds innocuous enough. So why is the BJP making a hue and cry over Lalu Prasad Yadav pointing this out at the March 3 Patna INDI-Alliance Maharally? Lalu's comment spawned ‘Modi Ka Parivar', which the BJP says will be Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ticket to a third straight term.
To millions Lalu Prasad Yadav is “patriarch” of the Rashtriya Janata Dal with a finger on the political pulse. Now, post his seminal contribution to the 2024 general elections campaign, the INDI-Alliance says the Modi-camp is rattled. And to rattle it more, there's ‘Modi Ka Asli Parivar', which also started trending on ‘X' which used to be Twitter.
Fact is, to the BJP's credit and advantage, ‘Modi Ka Parivar' was going great guns when the Congress-inspired ‘Modi Ka Asli Parivar' struck with pure white hate vengeance. ‘Modi Ka Asli Parivar' has dark faces of the BJP, those who were discredited including MPs like Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh who allegedly sexually harassed women wrestlers.
Fact is, Lalu Prasad Yadav has willy-nilly given rise to a cottage industry of ‘Modi Ka Parivar' variants. The hard-stung Bharatiya Janata Party says INDI-Alliance will regret Lalu's poll-hazard mistake while delivering the goods to the Prime Minister just like the Rahul Gandhi inspired ‘Mai Bhi Chowkidar' did in 2019.
The general consensus is, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has thrived with the victim card. This time around, it is his carefully cultivated image of a man who sacrificed family for Bharat. The man who sat cross-legged in splendid isolation in a holy cave of unknown antiquity to the man who breathed life into Ramlala for the sake of Bharat's culture.
Still without a family to call his own, the impression being created is that, like Sidddartha ‘Buddha', Narendra Modi, too, had cut off family ties and embraced ‘Vasudeva Kutumbakam'. The reality is, Modi's political ambitions have got a fresh lease on life with the ‘Modi Ka Parivar' brainwave. Also, as on previous occasions, with a poll round the corner, the opposition has conspired with fate to deliver to Modi another election.
BJP leaders and BJP workers have readily identified themselves with ‘Modi Ka Parivar', their bread and butter and their present and future depending on it, but how many common voters have latched on to ‘Modi Ka Parivar' is pure speculation though this is what matters to both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition front?
The fact of the matter is, expressing solidarity with Modi got easier with the “Modi Ka Parivar”. On second thoughts, Lalu should have stuck to speaking of his family alone. “What can we do if Prime Minister Modi does not have a family of his own?” the RJD patriarch said; perhaps, angry PM Modi wouldn't stop mentioning Lalu and “dynasty politics” in the same breath. The Prime Minister's “Parivarvad” jibe is a sore point for almost all opposition parties.
But for Lalu, PM Modi wouldn't have coined “Mera Bharat, Mera Parivaar.” Actually, Modi didn't have to respond and the BJP need not have gone to town with “Modi Ka Parivar”.
Every last BJP karyakarta including BJP IT Cell handles flooded social media screaming “Modi Ka Parivar', blind and deaf to the fact that the Bharatiya Janata Party is part of the ‘Sangh Parivar' of which Modi is also a long-standing member. This when millions think that not having a family is by far a better thing than to be a member of the ‘Sangh Parivar'.
And the BJP is ‘Sangh Parivar'. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which spearheads the Sangh Parivar, is Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ‘Parivar'. In other words, ‘Modi Ka Parivar' is the ‘Sangh Parivar'. There are those who claim that Modi gets his “instructions” from the “Sangh Parivar” and what Prime Minister Narendra Modi thinks “today”, the RSS had thought and passed on to Modi “yesterday”.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's immediate family members, his blood relatives, exist. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spends spare time, quality personal time, in the company of peacocks. BJP leaders including Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP Chief JP Nadda are part of “Modi ka Parivar”.
BJP spokespersons are talking of “Modi Ka Parivar”. Sudhanshu Trivedi, for example, is all over ‘X' throwing caution to the wind, berating Lalu Prasad Yadav for casting doubts on Modi's family status. “For PM Narendra Modi, the whole country is his family. Ever since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister, he has celebrated Diwali with soldiers on the border. They are his family. When he left his family to dedicate himself to his country, that very moment he pledged that the whole nation is his family.”
Modi himself is in the game of promoting “Modi Ka Parivar ‘', stating with a deadpan face, “140 crore people of this country are my family. Mera Bharat Mera Parivaar, my life is like an open book. People of the country know about it. When I left home in my childhood, I left with a dream that I will live for the countrymen.” (IPA Service)
