No surprises in Modi’s Maha Kumbh speech, barring one glaring omission

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention — or even attendance — during sessions of Parliament have been an increasing rarity since 2014. They are usually reserved for the “big occasions” — such as the opening and closing days of a session, presentation of the Union Budget, or when conventions demand his reply in either House.

Therefore, his unscheduled statement in Lok Sabha on Tuesday (March 18) caught many in the Opposition by surprise. It wasn’t until earlier in the day that MPs learnt that the prime minister would be making a statement in the Lower House on the 45-day Maha Kumbh that concluded in Uttar Pradesh’s Allahabad on February 26.

No surprises

In its substance, however, Modi’s 13-minute suo-motu intervention sprang no surprises — it remained true to Modi’s preferred political script of triggering Hindu religious fervour while equating it with “national awakening”, taking swipes at his adversaries, and glossing over any failure on part of his government or those of BJP regimes in different states.

Similarly, the ruckus created by a united Opposition in the House over the prime minister’s statement, which eventually forced proceedings to be adjourned for the day, was an expected corollary.

Also read: Centre has no data on Maha Kumbh stampede: MoS Home Nityanand Rai

Clear messages

Modi’s statement on Tuesday was probably one of his shortest addresses on the floor of Parliament but the political messages it sought to send to his party colleagues and supporters, as well as to the Opposition, were unambiguous.

The prime minister didn’t merely applaud the Maha Kumbh — which, as per government estimates, registered an attendance of over 66 crore devotees through its 45-day course — as a grand success. Instead, he equated it with “a moment of national awakening”, on a par with watershed historic events such as the first war of Indian Independence (the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny), Swami Vivekanand’s Chicago address, and Mahatma Gandhi’s Dandi March while simultaneously apportioning to it his slogans of “Sabka Prayaas” (truncating his Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Prayaas pitch), “Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat”, and “Viksit Bharat”, signalling that the BJP will continue to milk the Allahabad Maha Kumbh politically.

Seme old barbs

It was, thus, no surprise that the PM also craftily reminded his cheerleaders that the successful completion of the Maha Kumbh came a year after the inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and needs to be seen as a “continuation” of his assertion about India readying itself for the “next 1000 years”.

The hyperbole, expectedly, wasn’t without barbs that Modi enjoys stinging his political rivals with. While the Maha Kumbh was still on, Modi had, during a public event in Madhya Pradesh, slammed Opposition leaders for highlighting the visible civic and environmental chaos being wreaked upon Allahabad and at the Triveni Sangam, by asserting that such critics “hate the Hindu faith”, have a “mentality of slavery” and “dare to attack our faith, beliefs and temples, our religion, culture and principles…abuse our festivals, traditions and customs”.

On Tuesday, without naming individual leaders or rival parties, Modi said the Kumbh’s successful completion was a “befitting reply to those who doubted our resolve” and that the “unity shown at the Kumbh” had “pierced through the attempts of those who wanted to spread disunity”. Evidently, Modi plans to continue marshalling his oratorical prowess to brand his critics as being “anti-Hindu”.

Also read: 900 Kumbh visitors still missing, claims Akhilesh, seeks status on 'jobs' for bike riders

Predictably, no mention of stampede

That his statement included no condolence, or even regret, for the lives lost during the two stampedes at the Maha Kumbh — the exact casualty count, pegged by the UP government at 30 and hotly contested by the Opposition and UP’s civil society groups alike, is still a subject of polarising debate – is consistent with Modi’s long-perfected strategy of never acknowledging any failure, be it on his part or that of his party’s governments.

Likewise, the Prime Minister displayed yet again a Machiavellian flourish of pitching grand ideas to divert from real and substantive issues of the ground. By asserting that the Maha Kumbh should now inspire more celebrations of Indian rivers through “nadi utsavs”, while refusing to acknowledge increasing pollution of the River Ganga, precipitated further by the Maha Kumbh jamboree as documented by his own government’s Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Modi essentially buried any expectation of a course-correction on how governments execute action plans for river conservation.

Opposition speaks outside, as usual

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla’s strident refusal to allow any Opposition leader, including Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, to express their views in the House on the PM’s statement by seeking refuge in Conduct of Business Rules only re-established Modi’s well-known contempt and aversion to criticism.

While it is true that the Conduct of Business rules do not mandate an immediate critique from any member of a statement made in either House of Parliament by the PM or even a minister, there are umpteen examples of previous Speakers and their Rajya Sabha counterparts allowing brief submissions by Opposition members — a convention discontinued in the Modi years.

Opposition leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, of course, took their shot at slamming the PM’s statement outside Parliament after also stalling proceedings for the day in the Lok Sabha with protests over being muzzled by the Speaker.

Also read: Maha Kumbh water quality was fit for bathing, says CPCB's fresh report

The glaring omission

The same avenue, however, was not available for the one BJP satrap who was not just directly associated with the organising of the Maha Kumbh but who has also consistently projected the mega religious congregation’s successful completion as a personal triumph. To the politically inclined, the most glaring omission from Modi’s speech was not his silence on the stampede or the pollution of the Ganga but that he steered clear of directly sharing any credit for the event’s completion with UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Speculations that the Prime Minister shares frosty equations with Adityanath have kept the political grapevine abuzz ever since the latter became the UP chief minister back in 2017. With assembly polls due in UP in early 2027 and the state already charged up communally, the publicity apparatus of Adityanath, whose hardline Hindutva rivals only that of Modi, has been on an overdrive to sell the Maha Kumbh as the crowning glory of Yogi’s chief ministerial tenure.

By issuing omnibus congratulations to “everyone who made the Maha Kumbh a success” and simultaneously branding the event as being symbolic of the victory of his own “Sabka Prayaas” and “Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat” narratives, Modi may have deliberately sought to grossly undermine Yogi’s role in the Maha Kumbh’s preparations and execution — an omission that won’t go unnoticed in Lucknow.