| New Delhi, May 31: “Advani, wake up, place your hand on Modi’s head because India needs a Sardar Patel and don’t repeat the mistake you committed in Karachi when you sang paeans to Jinnah.” The warning to BJP patriarch L.K. Advani — who has opposed Narendra Modi’s frontline projection for 2014 — was not sounded at an RSS podium but, of all places, in a rock concert staged at Constitution Club, used by the eminence grise to expatiate on political themes of national and global concern. Not a place for a party to play out its internal tussles. But the concert was not organised strictly by the BJP but an affiliate association called the Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena headed by a former BJP youth wing activist, Tejinder Pal Singh Bagga. Bagga is infamous for assaulting lawyer-activist Prashant Bhushan, Hurriyat hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani and author-activist Arundhati Roy in the recent past for their supposed “radical” stances on Kashmir after which the BJP officially disowned him. That, however, did not check him from floating the capital’s first organised NaMo (Narendra Modi) fan club, cobbled from a motley membership of social network junkies, software pros, architects, flag-waving “nationalists” from the Bajrang Dal stable without their signature saffron bandanas, and RSS activists. Their agenda and objective were one: declare Modi as the Prime Minister candidate, convert 2014 polls into a presidential election and install the Gujarat chief minister as India’s next PM. “He is the perfect candidate because he has shown how rogue elements from both sides (Muslims and Hindus) can be reined in so that his state could prosper. That’s the template India needs,” declared Shilpi Tiwari, an architect who claimed she had taken a year’s sabbatical to pursue her NaMo-for-PM “goal”. Avowedly “apolitical”, the songs and speeches at Bagga’s show — set against a backdrop of a Modi poster, captioned “I want my nation to be Modi-fied”— was anything but that. Suresh Albela, who won the Great India Laughter Show, proved he could evoke laughter and fear simultaneously through idiom lifted out of RSS texts with an emphasis on a macho version of nationalism. Albela’s refrain was “Jaane kis din Lal Kille mein mardangi bhasha bolengee” (God knows on which day we will hear masculine language spoken from the Red Fort). He compared Modi with Krishna, saying he had emerged in the god’s “avatar” to save the country from a Prime Minister who “remained silent like a teddy bear unless he was prodded by the high command” and a leader who never thought beyond making a bee hive (Rahul Gandhi). Albela urged that Modi should be instantly anointed as the country’s supreme commander of the forces so that Dawood Ibrahim could be brought back and tried. But his cutting line was reserved for Advani who he repeatedly said should place his hand on Modi’s head because the BJP now lacks an Atal Bihari Vajpayee and needed a Sardar Patel. A rock band, outfitted with guitars and drums, sang praises to Shiva with the “NaMo” chant. Its members donned T-shirts embossed with Modi’s picture and his definition of “secularism” as “India First”. Few in the BJP wanted to say anything about Bagga’s project, save for their silent endorsements. But he is regularly spotted at the party headquarters. When Albela spoke the unspeakable about Advani possibly being a hurdle in the way of Modi’s prime ministerial ambitions and the cadre’s wishes, sources in the party applauded him. They hoped that “extra-party pressures” of the sort witnessed today would get across the “message” to Advani. | 