Why India's godmen want you to have their noodles

Now that Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insaan of Dera Sachcha Sauda has thrown his cap into the instant noodle ring, the theory has been proved beyond a fork-bite of doubt.

Religion is the oldest and most profitable start-up in the world. Baba Ramdev, who strongly resembles his Patanjali noodles in the number of knots and tangles he can get himself in, while successfully frolicking on stage with Yogini Shilpa Shetty Kundra, would agree.

Gurmeet Ram Rahim has named his noodle brand MSG. Whether he thinks his behen Union minister of food processing industries, Mrs Harsimrat Kaur, considers  it cute, or treats it like an elaborate public relations exercise to promote MSG 3, 4 or 5 (the movies, obviously: Coldplay, pay attention to the colour schemes), is irrelevant.

The moot point is that the godmen take the axiom - "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach" - too seriously. That the noodles resemble our small and large intestine than the gastric bag is of course a larger metaphorical point which yoga as political and alimentary theology can shed much light on.

Noodle wars are symbolic of the transcendental convolutions that the children of Manu and their illegitimate low-caste brethren have overcome to create the quintessential Hindu palate. So you have Ramdev's Patanjali (which is literally "an offering on a platter") doing some suitably heteronormative acrobatics on your plate and TV screens. But there comes the Dalit Sikh-origin noodle (applause, #ThugSwag), courtesy the motor-cycle-savvy Ram Rahim, and we have a democracy in awesome action right on your dining table.

And in case Kiku Sharda wants to play Ram Rahim again, he can simply dress up as an atta noodle, and wear a bandana that reads "Yippie: I'm MSG", preferably in children party font.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, therefore, is spoilt for choice. What better mascot for his Start-up India than the MSG-flaunting Gurmeet Ram Rahim? In fact, GRR is a one-size-fit-all icon for religion as politics, cultish swagger as pure economics, colour-splash as caste subversion, and dresscode as the unique desification of your oh-so-Western wardrobe.

Also, between Ramdev and Ram Rahim, the noodle may finally own up to his truly Vedic origins, and give up the pretension that it was somewhere in the badlands of Beijing it has had its culinary inception. High time that foolish historic blunder is rectified.