Why did bhakts go mum when Modi's mother came to visit him?

Whoa, it’s been two days since Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted pictures of him wheeling his mother, 95-year-old, Heeraben, around the 7, RCR garden, his official residence, and there’s been a deadpan reaction from his official bhakts?

They neither made it trend nor was there any gushing online, despite the PM, primping with sentiment, tweeting that he had spent quality time with his mother after a long time.

But neither the "loving son" images nor his sentiment about meeting her after a long time broke the ether, nor did it spur the bhakts to implode. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but is this a spectacle of denials? So what is the story behind the imagery that Modi fans seem so unimpressed?

1. Now who doesn’t like family pictures that tug at your heartstrings with sentiment and sop. Family albums are all about occasions of conviviality and intimacy, of get-togethers and bonding. Modi has three brothers, a sister, several nieces and nephews, and their families; even an estranged wife, Jashodaben: why are there no family get-togethers or family portraits after Modi became PM?

2. It’s all very well to bring your 95-year-old mother to your house, even though it came two years after you became the prime minister of the world’s largest democracy, but has the fact that he sent her packing off within two days of her arrival, made his fans squeamish?

Isn’t Hindutva sanskriti and parampara all about caring for aging parents, the elderly and the infirm? The Hindutva brigade never stops drumming the dharma beat, of a son’s duty toward his parents, but is dharma only for the praja (masses) and not for the raja? It certainly must have burned a hole in the beating hearts of the Hindutva brigade to watch poor Heeraben sent back home, denying her the official privileges of the best healthcare and comfort afforded to the prime minister of the country.

3. Now, Modi fans have a fetish for photo-shopping pictures of the PM, right from his early campaign days, when he was seen sweeping the floor, US President Barack Obama watching his speeches on television, to Julian Assange endorsing him. They were hilarious and even got him the label, "#Feku". But to send out real pictures with "Ba" (mother in Gujarati) is perhaps pushing the limits of fantasy? That too, of the evil, imported from the West – you know, all those Christian images of charitable goodness, rather than the glorious Bharatiya culture of quiet respect.

4. Modi is the first selfie PM of this country, which is also the only time the nation saw him preen and beam, so the attempts to soften his edges may have propelled him and his propaganda team to tweet the "Mummy" pictures. After all, there are no photographs of him as a child selling tea at railway stations, or in school competitions winning prizes, except for a an illustrated book of Bal Narendra swimming and playing with vicious crocodiles. So, if his early life was lacklustre and meagre, it’s never too late to have a re-imagined personal history.

5. Modi has awed people with his postulations on the "Vedic sciences" – about genetic Ganesha’s head transplant and surrogacy in the Mahabharata, but is he on the verge of getting a personality transplant? Is he the aggressive, ambitious leader with a killer instinct that is seen during campaigns, or is he the benevolent, unifying and respectful head of the country and doting son, all rolled into one?

While his devotees were a bit perplexed about the mother-son images, they soon swung into action to do what they do best – there were a dozen fake FB profiles created in the name of UPSC topper, Tina Dabi, that dedicated paeans praising Modi, and how he had inspired her. It’s another matter that Dabi found the fake posts “creepy.”