'M' for mujra, prime minister, or for messiah?

Earlier this month, addressing media in Bihar's capital Patna, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge had said Prime Minister Narendra Modi "only loves the word (probably meant letter) ‘M’ — Muslim, mutton, mangalsutra and machhli (fish)".

The reference was obviously to the PM's continuing communal — and patently inaccurate — rhetoric about how the Congress planned to snatch wealth and property from Hindus, including even the mangalsutras from married women, and redistribute them among Muslims.

As for mutton and machhli, Modi was referring to videos featuring Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Rashtriya Janada Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav, showing them eating meat and fish.

Now, Kharge has another 'M' to add to the list, with PM Modi accusing the INDIA bloc of “enslavement” and performing 'mujra (dance)' for its "Muslim vote bank".

Speaking at an election rally in the Pataliputra Lok Sabha constituency, about 40 km from Patna, Modi also blamed parties like RJD and Congress for SCs, STs and OBCs "being deprived of quotas" in minority institutions, and vowed to thwart such alleged attempts to rob Dalits and backward classes of reservations.

“Bihar is the land which has given a new direction to the fight for social justice. I wish to declare on its soil that I will foil the plans of INDIA bloc to rob SCs, STs and OBCs of their rights and divert these to Muslims. They may remain enslaved and perform mujra to please their vote bank”, the PM said.

He also alleged that the Opposition alliance was banking on the support of those who were indulging in “vote jihad” — yet another phrase that he has normalised — and referred to the Calcutta High Court order that struck down the West Bengal government’s decision to include a number of Muslim groups in the list of OBCs.

Sadly, he did not repeat his highly entertaining 'messiah' analogy at Pataliputra. On 21 May, as the entire nation knows by now, he had told a TV anchor that the secret of his energy lay in his quasi-messianic qualities.

It was only as long as his mother was alive, Modi said, that he was misled into thinking of himself a regular biological being of flesh and blood. His "oorja (energy)", he claimed, could not be of the regular biological sort; it had to be a divine gift so that divinity might work through him, leading to a plethora of memes and jokes on social media about his apparent 'non-biological messiah' status.

Well, we're adding 'M' for messiah to his list.

With PTI inputs