An act of faith: Modi, Rahul go on poll pilgrimage

Temple-hopping has become the essential prerequisite for the chief protagonists in the ongoing round of electioneering in Gujarat.

Or so it seems with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as also the Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi combining pilgrimages and religious metaphors in their denouncement of the respective opponents in Gujarat.

During his latest two-day tour of a poll-bound Gujarat, Modi played the victim of Opposition propaganda on Sunday when he said, referring to Lord Shiva, that he, too, had to swallow the metaphorical poison spewed against him since 2002 by his opponents. He also attacked his opponents as “thieves and robbers”, who were “conspiring” against him.

And he applied tilak of the soil of his school on his forehead, in what was seen as his unceasing love of symbolism.

Kicking off the campaign for the 2017 Assembly election — expected to be announced soon — from the famous Dwarkadheesh Temple, Modi laid the foundation stone for an airport near the Chotila temple, and sought blessings of Lord Hatkeshwar Mahadev in his hometown of Vadnagar in Mehsana district. More, he reminded the home audience that Lord Hatkeshwar and Lord Vishwanath of Varanasi, his Lok Sabha constituency, were the same as Lord Shiva.

Rahul Gandhi followed suit, launching the Congress campaign from Dwarkadheesh Temple, and played what many have termed a ‘soft Hindutva’ card by visiting more temples during the first leg of his ‘Navsarjan Yatra’ (Campaign for New Creation) in the Saurashtra region last week. Clearly, like Modi, Rahul, too, is firing on religious cylinders, leaving nothing to chance in the crucial elections.

Accordingly, in the last few weeks, Rahul has visited some 15 temples and Modi nearly a dozen. And, they are expected to leave no major temples unvisited by the time votes are polled. Clearly, both the parties are trying to woo the 88 per cent Hindu population, rather than the 12 per cent minorities. Last week, Rahul even climbed the 650-odd steep steps to a temple at Chotila near Rajkot with huffing and puffing State Congress leaders in tow.

Politics across Gujarat has been clearly polarised since 1995, except in the tribal areas, which largely continue to be the Congress bastion. Both the parties appear to be invoking divine blessings to increase their 2012 tallies by around 35 Assembly seats each. In 2012, Modi’s last election as the CM, the BJP had won 119 seats and the Congress 57. In 2017, the BJP wants to increase its tally to at least 150 seats, out of 182, and the Congress to at least 92.

These 35-odd seats can make or mar the BJP’s target of 150 seats and the Congress’ crossing the Rubicon of 92 seats.

But Modi is also not letting go of vikas as his time-tested trump card. In his latest visit, he turned a pre-Diwali Santa Claus, announcing projects worth over ₹12,000 crore for Gujarat.

The Vijay Rupani government has transferred dozens of State officials, indicating the arrival of the poll schedule soon. Last week, the State government announced to set up a commission for those from the unreserved categories, and also tried to douse Patidar fires by seeking to withdraw court cases against them. It cut little ice, however: State BJP chief Jitu Vaghani had to flee, without addressing a rally on Sunday, during his ongoing ‘Gujarat Gaurav Yatra’.

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