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. Yamini MacLeanMay 24, 2023 at 8:35 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalMay 24, 2023 at 9:14 PM

      One wonders why too many people fail to see this.

      Delete
  2. WaterMay 25, 2023 at 1:05 AM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalMay 25, 2023 at 7:48 AM

      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. peppylady (Dora)May 25, 2023 at 8:39 AM

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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 25, 2023 at 9:48 AM

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

      Delete
  4. magiceyeMay 25, 2023 at 10:20 AM

    Unfortunately your writing is the bare truth. Scarily so.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 25, 2023 at 2:00 PM

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

      Delete
  5. Anupama JoshyJune 4, 2023 at 9:39 AM

    India is going backward - sad truth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 4, 2023 at 1:08 PM

      Some people can only move backward. And meet Hanumans!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 4

The footpath between Park Avenue and Subhash Bose Park The Park Avenue in Ernakulam is flanked by gigantic rain trees with their branches arching over the road like a cathedral of green. They were not so domineering four decades ago when I used to walk beneath their growing canopies. The Park Avenue with its charming, enormous trees has a history too. King Rama Varma of Kochi ordered trees to be planted on either side of the road and make it look like a European avenue. He also developed a park beside it. The park was named after him, though today it is divided into two parts, with one part named after Subhash Chandra Bose and the other after Indira Gandhi. We can never say how long Indira Gandhi’s name will remain there. Even Sardar Patel, whom the right wing apparently admires, was ousted from the world’s biggest cricket stadium which was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by Narendra Modi.   Renaming places and roads and institutions is one of the favourite pastimes of the pres...
12 comments
Read more

Good Life

I introduced A C Grayling’s book, The God Argument , in two earlier posts.   This post presents the professor’s views on good life.   Grayling posits seven characteristics of a good life.   The first characteristic is that a good life is a meaningful one.   Meaning is “a set of values and their associated goals that give a life its shape and direction.”   Having children to look after or achieving success in one’s profession or any other very ordinary goal can make life meaningful.   But Grayling says quoting Oscar Wilde that everyone’s map of the world should have a Utopia on it.   That is, everyone should dream of a better world and strive to materialise that dream, if life is to be truly meaningful.   Ability to form relationships with other people is the second characteristic.   Intimacy with at least one other person is an important feature of a meaningful life.   “Good relationships make better people,” says G...
21 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 1

Inside St Francis Church, Fort Kochi Moraes Zogoiby (Moor), the narrator-protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel The Moor’s Last Sigh , carries in his genes a richly variegated lineage. His mother, Aurora da Gama, belongs to the da Gama family of Kochi, who claim descent from none less than Vasco da Gama, the historical Portuguese Catholic explorer. Abraham Zogoiby, his father, is a Jew whose family originally belonged to Spain from where they were expelled by the Catholic Inquisition. Kochi welcomed all the Jews who arrived there in 1492 from Spain. Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast of Kerala in 1498. Today’s Fort Kochi carries the history of all those arrivals and subsequent mingling of history and miscegenation of races. Kochi’s history is intertwined with that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Arbas, the Jews, and the Chinese. No culture is a sacrosanct monolith that can remain untouched by other cultures that keep coming in from all over the world. ...
7 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let...
36 comments
Read more