Sanghi shortcut to fame: Say something stupid

If you are from Sangh Parivar - all the better if you are a BJP member - and the media doesn't show your mug on TV because they are busy pushing sound bites from senior leaders, here's a sure-shot method to get bang under the spotlight: Say something outrageous. Say Vladimir Putin is Hindu and his name is Vaarahmihir Putr Singh. Say Arab pagans were Hindus and those destroyed ka'aba idols were actually of Hindu goddesses. Say Paris is Pari Nagar and that's why the French swallow the "s" in Paris. If nothing works, say the word Muslim. That would do.

If you have been doing that for a decade and have given up because of lack of response, now is the time to reinvent your inner publicity seeker. Say something your leaders wouldn't dare to endorse. The times have changed, the achhe din are here. Hey, make hay while the sun shines bright on your saffron robe. If you make rabidly communal statements, it will stick because that's your glue. Like a beard is the glue for a Muslim to stick outrageous statements like the sun revolves around the Earth. A Saudi cleric did and he perfectly fit the narrow-minded Muslim clergy slot.  

Ladies and gentlemen, Sadhvi Prachi is killing it. She has now asked Hindus to not watch films starring the Khans of Bollywood. Thus rendering Gauri, Kiran and Kareena's marital life impossible to continue. Jokes apart, the fact is that the 13 Hindus that the Sadhvi can influence, cannot influence the Box Office collections. These 13 and the sadhvi herself can form a little club and watch Raja Harishchandra for the 14th time, while the rest of us, Hindus, Muslims, Christians and whoever you got, will queue up to see whichever movie promo makes them buy tickets.

In a country where national media doesn't care about MLAs on fast unto death, a small-time leader and once an MLA candidate from the Bharatiya Janata Party is making headlines at regular intervals. She has learnt the trick. And the result is that she gets more air time than most chief ministers aspire to get. Since the BJP-led NDA government has come in power, the media is looking out for the crazies from the parivar because, well, their sick statements didn't cut it during the last government's time.

Imagine a TV channel asking Manmohan Singh to control Sakshi Maharaj! That would have sounded as ridiculous as Sadhvi Prachi. Sakshi Maharaj had the same fundamental rights like the rest of us, when it came to speaking. So did Manmohan Singh, though he rarely used it. But asking a Congress government to shut a BJP motormouth is tantamount to asking the regime to silence the Opposition. Now that Narendra Modi is in that seat, it becomes his duty to silence the gutter-mouths. To give him his due, he has tried to do so.

In and out of Parliament, he has blasted the rabble-rousers who spoil his image. But if Sakshi Maharaj observes silence for a day, there's always a sadhvi reasserting her communal credentials. There's always a channel making it a national issue, forcing other channels to make it a national issue, forcing Congress spokespersons to demand a statement from the prime minister, forcing the prime minister to remain silent for another week, allowing channels to have long, boring debates on the issue where a bucktoothed pandit spars with Father Dominique and a token Muslim maulana, one of who makes another outrageous statement and Rahul Easwar gets to flaunt his latest black jacket on prime time.

The token Maulana is no leader of Muslims.

Neither is Pandit Bucktooth or Easwar a leader of Hindus.

Father Dominique is no leader of Christians.

Sitaram Yechury doesn't represent the poor.

Sakshi Maharaj doesn't represent Hindus.

Likewise, Sadhvi Prachi is no leader of Hindus.

She is a BJP leader. That should be enough to demand an apology from Narendra Modi. If he is too big, at least a district president of the BJP should offer an apology and hog the airtime that ethically belongs to people dying of swine flu in Gujarat, communal tension in Saharanpur, open-cast mining victims of Jharkhand and tribals of Odisha, women survivor's network of Manipur or landslide victims of Spiti. Remember, your seniors are as vulnerable to the foot-in-mouth disease and some of them have been missing from the stage for some time.

If they come back with their own rhetoric, you, the small-time leader, will have little space to occupy. So go ahead and say that people should not watch Kareena Kapoor's pelvic thrusts because Islam was thrust upon her. Not until she does ghar wapsi.