Leaders are unabashedly invoking deities to influence voters in poll-bound States

As the dust refuses to settle over the latest religio-political statement by SP president Akhilesh Yadav, the BJP has joined the issue with him. Ostensibly seeking to strike a chord with Yadav voters in Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh had recently said that “Lord Krishna comes to my dream every night and tells me that I would form the next Government”. In a riposte, Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya said Akhilesh didn’t know what he was talking about. He mocked the SP leader, saying the latter was hoping to win 400 seats in the upcoming election; now “we can only hope that he manages to fill up 400 chairs” in his election rallies. To put it succinctly, the electoral battle has reached god’s grounds, more so now than ever before. With the Hindu votes likely to be the clinching factor in most of the five States going to polls in the first quarter of this year (including UP, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa), and ongoing brazen attempts to polarise voters in the name of religion and caste, it’s no wonder that each party leader has nominated one god to be a devotee of.

The trend, however, is not new. Indian electoral-political history is replete with such instances where the crutch of godly intervention has been resorted to, rather than spelling out concrete policy decisions in manifestoes, ahead of elections. In the recent times, the BJP members have made full-throated and lung-bursting chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Har, Har Modi; Ghar, Ghar Modi’ to make the Ram and Shaivite voters remember their favourite deities and, therefore, vote Narendra Modi or his representative as if these gods have adopted the saffron leaders or given them a franchise to use their names. Not to be left behind, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi let a janeu show and proclaimed to be a devotee of Lord Shiva, saying that “my truth is with me”. Among other prominent leaders, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is said to be a ‘Ram bhakt’; Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal believes in the concept of ‘Ram Rajya’ and is a Hanuman devotee; BSP supremo Mayawati would like to convert to Buddhism a la Dr BR Ambedkar; and Asaduddin Owaisi has Allah on his side, Inshallah! However, no political party has any patent on devotion. The electoral battle should focus on the development of economy, infrastructure and general well-being of the citizenry.