Tharoor, of the ‘Hindu-Pakistan’ and ‘Cattle-Class’ notoriety and ‘Why I’m a Hindu?’ fame, is aware that the scales are weighed against him this time, but he is banking on Rahul Gandhi’s candidature from Wayanad to swing the verdict in his favour. Rahul Gandhi himself has no such doubts, he’ll fly through to the 17th Lok Sabha without any difficulty from Wayanad and, perhaps, carry Tharoor along with him.

The pall of religion hangs over Kerala and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s attempt to place Kerala as the only progressive state in the Union has made it a battle between ‘Nava Kerala’ and the ‘Lunatic Asylum’. Kerala is the last bastion of the left parties, notably of the CPM, for which to remain a “national party”, it will have to win at least 4 seats, a landmark it might have accomplished if there was no hurt Swami Ayyappa or a Rahul Gandhi Wayanad.

Chances are Wayanad would actually be the ‘first” and “only” winning seat for Rahul. The Kerala voter is the unique electoral animal who will not vote dynasty at home but will do the honour to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty at the all-India level. “Does that come out of being the most literate state?” is a question that defies logic. Rahul Gandhi was not in Kerala on polling day but Shashi Tharoor was very much present and he found EVMs voting for the BJP!

Gujarat is another bucket altogether. Prime Minister Narendra Modi woke up early and the photo-ops were as expected – one showing him bowing to touch his mother’s feet and the other at the Ranit polling booth in Ahmedabad, Amit Shah’s constituency, where he cast his vote – but the thought that came to mind was that there is a very thin line that separates the dynast from the cult figure. If Rahul Gandhi is dynast, then Modi is the cult! ‘Which of the two is more dangerous to democracy, dynast or cult?’ is hard to figure out in the thick of elections.

The case against dynasty is that it perpetuates rule by a single family. The case against cult is that a continuity of cult can change the entire composition and culture of a nation, country. There are all sorts of fervours attached to cult-figures and one of them is the religious. For centuries, if not millenniums, the Hindu stuck to a way of life, free from the shackles of monotheistic organized religion, and then the infusion of religion, Hindutva, which it seems has come to a fruition with the introduction of a cult-figure – Narendra Modi. Will he follow in the footsteps of Xi and Putin and become Prime Minister for Life?

Modi is talking all the right democratic words, coining new ones and giving new meanings to anagrams thrown into the mix. Like ‘IED’ and ‘Id’, the first symbolic of ‘terror’ and the second linked to voter ‘Id’. It is around such interpretations that cults are built. The dynast is a biological birth but the cult-figure is produced in the petri-dish of a cultural experiment and a cult-experiment going awry is more the rule than an exception.

A cult can also be built around a dynast but it’s an exception and in the Indian context the closest was Indira Gandhi though, going by recent indications, it’s the Nehru-cult that that Modi and Shah and the right in general want dismantled as the BJP went around building an aura around the RSS cult. Cult nurturing a cult! Modi and RSS. General Elections 2019 is in a way a watershed elections. It will either spell the end of dynasty or cement a cult.

There are dynasts all over the country’s landscape – from Supriya Sule of the Pawar dynasty in Maharashtra to Mulayam Singh Yadav dynasty and its brood in Uttar Pradesh – but it’s the big one in New Delhi which is running scared, from ancestral stronghold Amethi in Uttar Pradesh to the best-hope conquest of Wayanad in Kerala. The cult of the RSS and cult-figure Narendra Modi appear to have the upper-hand. What that means to the country and people, many people will say, is something devilish to think. (IPA Service)