Only Modi can fuse war against terror with respecting women in a speech

He held out a "sudarshan chakra" presented to him by the local unit of his party as crowds thundered into a rapturous applause. Prime Minister Narendra Modi not only did some demon-slaying at Lucknow's famous Aishbagh Ramleela grounds, being the first PM who broke from tradition of gracing the Delhi Ramlila grounds (can we acknowledge the Bollywoodisation of Ramlila to "Ramleela" in latest parlance, please?), but he also supervised his own morphing into an amalgamation of Hindu divinities - being both Ram and Krishna at once, symbologies to boot.  

In the poll-bound Uttar Pradesh capital, it was spectacle unforeseen. Under a gargantuan banner of Lord Ram, the "avenger of Uri" took to the podium, was felicitated for India's surgical strikes across the Line of Control, was surrounded by BJP leaders from UP as well as other dignitaries, and delivered a speech that began and ended with the chants of "Jai Shri Ram".

It was however an effort that many are saying was sober, in fact quite excellent in its channelisation of Ramayan metaphors and images to drive home the twin points of defeating terror in all its forms and saving, loving the girl child. Both the points were packed with several punches that having a storyteller-in-chief at the helm ensures. 

Modi started out with the usual greetings, after Rajnath Singh asked him to deliver his speech. The opening chants were significant.

Modi then went on a little trip down the mythology lane, excavating the meaning of Ravana across centuries. He took, of course, a rampantly Hindu Brahminical line, but suitably spiked with modern connotations. Ravan for Modi represented evil in many forms, and those forms were going to be crossborder terror and female foeticide.

That's tradition and individual talent, but that tradition, Prime Minister, is squarely within a narrower idea of what's India and for whom.

Emphasising how terrorism is becoming the scourge of the modern world, PM Modi, however, in a brilliant twist of image mixing, brought up an unlikely candidate for Indians to emulate. While everyone had expected him to beat the war drum that Ram would wage and win for India, Modi spoke about Jataayu, the bird-king who became the first frontier of war against the Ravan-shaped terror in saving Sita (which in Modi's symbology is both Bharat Mata and the Indian woman, born and unborn).

That, by all standards, is indeed a fantastic wordplay and brilliant stroke of political interjection. Jataayu, free from several of the communally-laced connotations that Ram invokes, is something many Indians would identify with without being uncomfortable about its implications. The bird-king is a neutral idea that Modi just sold to an India facing escalated tensions with the Muslim-majority neighbouring country. 

Moreover, Modi equated Ravan with pessonal and collective flaws within the citizens, and said that for him Ravan could also be poverty, illiteracy and filth - which are unglamourous forms of terror which nevertheless impact many more of our countrymen and women.

Certainly, the martial pitch wasn't exactly toned down, only adjusted according to the metaphors used.

But then , PM Modi narrated how the terrorism issue has traversed a long way for India, from being seen as a mere "law and order" problem in the aftermath of the 1992-3 Mumbai blasts, to being a global menace after 9/11 for America and at the end of 2016, after Uri attack, for India. That Pakistan has been isolated globally was the subtext that he gently hinted at.

Interestingly, albeit misleadingly, Modi equated Ravan with gender discrimination. This is going to haunt him in coming days because many interpretations hold Ravan to be a proto-feminist, whose vast repository of knowledge was too big to fit into one mortal head, hence he had ten! Moreover, the fact that it was Ram who sent Sita to walk through fire is something that Modi carefully oblterated because Dusshera is all about a straitjacket of good's victory over evil.  

But that straitjacket assumes significance when war cries are sounded, even though laced in ancient wisdom. The Budha to Yudha leap can be seen in the context of the surgical strike, which the posters in Lucknow and Varanasi have been all about. The mantle of Ram is strictly Modi's, as is the new just war, now ongoing. 

Nevertheless, the timed dilutions of the Ravan metaphor continued, in order to localise the meanings, give credence to many of the pet Modi government schemes such as Swachh Bharat, Digital India, Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao, etc.

Hence, the fusion of International Girl Child Day with Vijayadashami becomes significant. Only days before, the heartwrenching news of a Jain teenage gir dying after fasting for 68 days in order to bring good luck to her family had rocked the nation. Modi gently warned against sending women to their deaths, whether inside the womb or outside it, and that is a lesson that all Hindus eager to follow Modi at every step cannot just ignore.

In all it was a well-rounded, far soberer a speech than many expected it to be, given the hype and the buildup. Perhaps, PM Modi has decided to let the billboards do the talking this time. 

Social media is abuzz with Modi's Vijayadashami speech, which many found more democratic than the RSS honcho Mohan Bhagwat's earlier in the day. So the good cop, bad cop drama is likely to continue for the time being. 

Some notes of festive scepticism were also sounded.

Meanwhile.

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Also read: Modi, the avenger of Uri, plays Lord Ram in Lucknow

Watch: PM Modi's full speech at the Ram Leela in Aishbagh, Lucknow