Bajrang Jumla Party

As is usually the great King Vikramaditya climbed up the tree and brought down Betal on his shoulders. Betal began the storytelling.

Hear, hear the story of the mythical land

Where you can find myths aplenty, small to grand

Myth in the mountains, myth in the caves

Myth in the rocks and many about their rivers.

Where a million Gods lived

One for valor, one for wealth

One for knowledge, one for the light.

Many more, one can’t count, even if you try with all your might.

Where the gods can appear and disappear at will

The demons and asuras by their astras, they kill.

People sing about the gods and their glory

Yet, could not prevent invasions, tells the history. 

As we look at 2020, the mythical land stands mired in poverty. Invading kings and the empires had looted the country and brought it from prosperity to poverty. The ancient knowledge and wisdom could not prevent the people from dividing themselves in the name of religion and caste. The latter, a unique theory sanctified in the scriptures to which even one favorite God succumbed to its practice as told in the great epic Ramayana.

2020 has been singularly bad for the country. A tiny neighbor overtook in terms of GDP. The country dropped two ranks in the human development index. It stands below her neighbors in Hunger Index. In the latest survey report of the National Family Health data reveals an increase in malnutrition, anemia, and stunting among children, the future of this country.

Yet the ruling elite talk big about building a glorious temple, central vista as if they would remedy the situation. None of God’s astras came to their rescue when a big neighbor walked into the country and occupied borderland. They have passed a law to overpower love and in some states, police are busy only with preventing inter-faith marriages and arresting the organizers. Yet, the ruling Bajrang Jumla Party wins elections which the party members take as an endorsement of their rule and the things they do.

Oh! Great King why such a thing happens in this mythical land?

King paused for a while and said “For a change, I am answering this question by the way of storytelling that would lead to the answer.”

There was a miserly sugar cane farmer who would not part with a single cane to anybody. Someone threw a challenge that nobody could walk out of this farmers’ sugar cane field with sugar cane each in their hand. Two youths took up the challenge. They started fighting in front of the sugar cane field. Farmer watching this came up to dissuade them. But his intervention only aggravated their quarrel. The youth ran into the field chasing one another. One of them picked up a cane and started hitting the other, soon the other one also followed. Now both had canes in each hand, fighting and chasing each other, and ran out of the field. The farmer just watched and could not do anything. The youth won the challenge. Once they disappeared from the farmer’s sight, they hugged each other in being successful in their trickery and ate up the sugar cane.

The Bajrang Jumla party behaves like these youth. All the time they create a ruckus and distract the polity and walk away successful in elections. The janata (people) are like the farmers fall prey to these jumlas. The Bajrang Jumla party’s leader, who wears different cloaks like a magician, has taken this distraction and diversion to the level of art. Recall deep strike in the neighborhood just before the 2019 elections to divert people from the unmitigated disaster of demonetization and GST. People like sadvi, goli maaro (shoot them) Thakur repeat this. Recall the Tablighi Jamat accusation at the start of COVID to divert attention from their own early lack of action against COVID. As long as people are willing to suffer fools gladly, they would carry on with this jumla (rabble rousing) strategy.

Therein lies, their secret concluded the King.

When the story got published it created a ruckus in social media. The IT-cell of the Jumla party got into overdrive claiming such a Vikram-Betal story was never told and it is a fake perhaps with a foreign hand in the same. Critiques pointed out that except for the poetry one may claim as abstract rest of it was all factual and the government must answer the challenges posed.

Publishers of Vikram-Betal story had a great time with the storybooks flying off the shelves of book stores and they booked repeat orders until another story broke out about a new virus strain of COVID.

As such life as usual continued in the land of mythology.