Election in India have increasingly become events when media reports about concrete representations of the state appear increasingly tragic, mean and shabby. And high sounding words like freedom, justice and civilised behaviour become unmentionables. In such an atmosphere when Rahul Gandhi first spoke of opening a “Mohabbat ki Dukan (a shop of love)” in the “Nafrat ka Bazaar (the bazaar of hatred)” all around us, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) leaders were swift to slam him.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Who needs Mohabbat ki Dukaan? No one! said the defence minister while addressing a meet to celebrate nine grand years of Gauravshali Bharat under Narendra Modi. Another senior diplomat-turned-an-important-minister when asked about his opinion on “the shop” by a smirking anchor in a TV interview, saw it as a hare brained idea, perhaps indegenous ‘Jugaad’ version of what the West calls a Love Fest, a major party spokesperson with dancing eyebrows was equally dismissive. What kind of stuff such a shop would be selling ? He said and let the eyebrows say the rest. The heavy weight BJP party president was angry. He predicted the Mohabbat ki Dukan was a misnomer, it was going to be a mega mall of hatred.
Modi was equally dismissive of the idea of dispensing love. He suspected, he said without naming Rahul the perp, the Opposition’s Dukan was actually an outlet for selling fake videos damning his government blatantly by using AI and new media technologies. But he believed that he and his party had nothing much to do. He was sure the people themselves would soon force such a shop to bring down its shutters.
It is obvious that India’s ruling party was not just embarrassed but rather angry at the Opposition for introducing a word like Mohabbat (love) in a serious political context and the party media cells taking cue, advertised it as an obscenity or worse, a conspiracy to besmirch the good name of a government that has ruled India successfully for two decades and looked forward to winning the third time.
Why should a party whose leaders command a near perfect system to condemn and punish those that dared oppose their ideology in any field — with aggressive shaming and public humiliation, in some cases with harsh legal action — be so rattled by the simple phrase one wonders? Could it be that like many tradional Indians they cling to a notion of democracy that makes occasional abuse acceptable to the public as a necessary disciplining actions. Make them believe whatever is being done unto the dissenters is for their own good, and the nation’s.
There is no denying that within the parent body the Sangh Parivar — of which the BJP is a political arm — there is lots of affection, care and freedom for those within its fold. But freedom, care and love are infinitely divisible in our country because a larger part of it falls outside this Parivar. This is confirmed by the electoral response of the Indian voters. It is indicating clearly that for them the Indian state has become a largely dysfunctional entity. In 2024, they refused a decade old odd version of care and unkindness being offered to various groups in varying degrees through government doles for “weaker sections” and the “mothers and sisters”. From Ayodhya to Amethi to Varanasi what the voters needed were not tokenisms like buildings and roads and dams built with public money after bulldozing homes and smaller temples being “gifted” to the nation by leaders. They wished to see and be surrounded by actual acts of attention, love and caring, not glamorous spectacles, occasional free ration schemes and lure of money coming in through tourism and pilgims.
True, the ruling party’s rhetoric was easily whipped to a crescendo by the godi (lapdog) media because it did not demand a change in the patriarchal domination of males within homes, offices and temples. Nor did it actually register the pain of the poor and the marginalised whose homes were bulldosed and forests cut for trade and tourism promotion. It may have seemed the silent masses accepted the logic of the powerful rulers and the corporate cronies, but they knew in their hearts it was not right and voted accordingly. This made the venerable duo of Pradeep Gupta and Prashant Kishor cut a sorry figure when the actual results came. As an experienced mother turned grand mother one couldn’t help but notice how abused children and weaker sections resent a god cop-bad cop treatment from powerful and arrogant. But they learn early on to withhold the truth about their real feelings and intentions in public or when the cameras and the chirpy anchors and pollsters came calling.
Actually most Indians, brought up under grim strict traditional parenting, can seldom, if ever discuss love within homes or outside with teachers. The decade-old NDA rule revalidated the false concept that true love is rooted in blood/caste relationships. So one must naturally bond with one’s natal Parivar and caste. One’s love for the State likewise was not an organic growth of each Indian exercising basic constitutional rights (Adhikar), but must be bound by a deeper sense of duty (Kartavya) tempered with veneration for the State.
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What the term Mohabbat ki Dukan, (though a little filmy like ‘Suit-boot ki Sarkar’) has done, is that it has demystified the larger meaning of love, the art and practice of loving, to millions of ordinary voters in an easy to understand phrase straight out of Hindi films. One major reason for the popularity of Hindi films has been their actors’ infinite capacity to test love in various arenas, to try and locate a humane core to the family, the State and the judiciary. The films that have been the biggest hits have upheld when the young are unable to say that real love is possible only with a sense of justice within families, and within the State. Bereft of it no family or democracy or indeed language can thrive.
On the face of it our leaders have said for a decade that we live in a culture that respects and upholds the freedom of speech, the basic civil rights for children and human rights of all including women and non-caste groups. Yet India’s family units, large or small, are encouraged to remain bastions that are led from the front by males, no matter how weak or petty or tyrannical. The State supports this overarching paternal architecture because within the party (100%) top political leaders decide what is best for the nation and women wings of the party. The top judiciary is as late Justice Leila Seth had pointed out a decade ago, is also female deficient. And this has resulted in several judicial verdicts that upheld the societal status quo in cases relating to articles 14 (guarantee of equality before law), and article 15 (prohibiting discrimination on grounds of religion, caste, gender and place of birth). Some were challenged and turned down, many were not.
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Within the media, our family oriented television shows put out inappropriate images and messages confirming sexism, casteism and the dominance of the males everywhere as natural and right. Our news panels (overcrowded with men) have little to no critical reflection on the human core of issues under scrutiny. Nor do they summon the courage to say the way of obtaining political power through lies and money and/or expected feminine guiles (familial ties to major politicians or traditional attire) is plain wrong. There is a similar suspension of disbelief in the world of advertising that crafts the leader’s image and sells it through indoor/outdoor advertising to voters. This has made it easier for people in power to lie and bluster through reasoned arguments if and when they surface.
The wounded child inside within the silenced voters is what Rahul Gandhi has successfully tapped into with the concept of opening a Mohabbat ki Dukan in a Nafrat ka Bazar. He is himself someone who when he first spoke the truth, was silenced by paternal sadism of the grey haired ruling cabals unwilling to permit politics to become an arena where love can coexist with power and in time humanise it.
All awakening to love leads ultimately to a realisation of the human contours and colours of a real democracy committed to protect all constitutionally given creative freedoms. This is why great minds from Valmiki to Ved Vyas and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu have repeatedly said, the human truth (Manush Satya) stands above all.
Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.