Skip to main content

Modi’s Lions in India’s New Caste System

Ashoka's lions


More and more opposition parties are choosing to boycott the inauguration of the new Parliament building by PM Modi. The four lions of the national emblem that Modi unveiled atop the building on 11 July 2022 will snarl even more furiously now, I believe.

The 9.5-ton representation of Ashoka’s lions is a stark contrast to the graceful gentleness of the Sarnath lions which were inspired by the Buddha. What Modi’s lions represent is a paradigm shift. India is making a decided transition from the Buddha to the Modi. From compassion to aggression. From mutual coexistence to subjugation of the other.

Modi’s lions mark the subversion of the Buddha as much as Buddha himself was a subversion of the ruthless Brahminical system of his time. Buddha could not accept the heartlessness of the Brahminical system with its untouchability and all the brutality that went with it. Modi is now taking India back to that brutality, so to say.

In the ancient India, the sages left human societies and went into isolation. They practiced asceticism, acquired spiritual qualities and breathed shanti mantras. In Modi’s India, those who claim to be yogis and ascetics are violent people who openly advocate brutality, acquire and flaunt wealth and luxury, and run gigantic business establishments some of which sell spurious products.

In Modi’s India, Lord Rama abandons his Maryada Purushottam image and takes on the bow and the arrow with unmistakable ferocity. Even the gentle Hanuman is made to snarl like a wild simian. When will Lord Krishna replace his flute with an NG-7 machine gun?

When a controversy broke out last year about the snarling lions of Modi which insulted Ashoka’s lions and hence India’s cultural heritage, Anupam Kher wrote in his social media page: “If the lion has teeth, it will, of course, show them. This is, after all, the lion of independent India. If needed, the lion will bite too.” Modi’s lions are not only biting now! Look at the current situation in Manipur, for example. There are a lot of other examples.

Modi's lion

Redefining religious and cultural symbols is perfectly okay. That is required, in fact, lest religions become redundant and cultures become static. But the process of redefining should be based on forward-looking values and principles. Isn’t Modi’s India going backward to just another version of the old Brahminical system? A new caste system is being put in place. The richest 1% of Indians own 40% of India’s wealth now. This new ‘Brahminical’ class is ruling India now. They make the policies. They loot the banks systematically. They make a lot of Indians new untouchables.

 

Comments

  1. Hari OM
    Regressive, revisionist government seems to be the fad of the 21st century. None of it truly for the good of the people - wherever they be... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. One wonders why too many people fail to see this.

      Delete
  2. A powerful expression. I liked your way of comparison Buddha-Modi. Your point of view is genuine and I think I too hold the same views. Change is inevitable and we all should change for good but in forwards direction towards growth and not backward and towards stagnation. Enlightening one.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A leader defines the country. What has Modi made of India? Though many countries seem to applaud for Modi, his vision is Janus-faced. One face looks forward & the other backward. India is going backward.

      Delete
  3. I feel most of world is heading to caste system. To me, it not right.
    Coffee is on, and stay safe.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Globalization was more about making a few people wealthier than the others than about opening up the restrictions.

      Delete
  4. Unfortunately your writing is the bare truth. Scarily so.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. India will be transmogrified beyond recognition if Modi's BJP comes back to power in the next election.

      Delete
  5. India is going backward - sad truth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some people can only move backward. And meet Hanumans!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser