Like, for example, why the three farm laws and why farmers in the tens of thousands are bracing cold chilling winter nights in the open at Delhi’s borders? Why do they want the repeal of those three laws, which they say will, when implemented, make them hostage to the ambitions of Ambani and Adani and everybody crony capitalist in between?

Given the option, Yogi Adityanath would consign the ‘Sardar’ and the ‘Jatt’ and the ‘Jat’ and others who plough through life’s doldrums to the barren fields of inconsequential existence. Hunger strikes thrice a day and not many of us can Yogi-like find time to cuddle cow and calf. Strange as it may sound, ‘Cow & Calf’ was once the election symbol of the Congress party! How time flies!

And how, the times, they are a changing? The ‘cow’ nowadays is captive to a Hindu nationalist political party’s electoral playbook. And you got to be extra vigilant not too be seen transporting cow and calf in closed trucks across borders after cow-dust! For, outside of the American Wild West, the only cowboys are in Yogi Adityanath’s party, and in his bailiwick.

To return to the farmers, to whom Yogi Adityanath has taken a liking to, which should actually worry the farmers, the Yogi doesn’t take kindly to farmers scaling barricades. That sort of behaviour was solely reserved for ‘karsevaks’ who brought down the dome of a masjid where now a mandir is being built – a grand temple for Maryada Purshottam Ram at his birthplace – Ayodhya in Yogiland Uttar Pradesh.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the ‘Bhavya Ram Mandir,’ but Ayodhya is in Yogi Adityanath’s fiefdom and so every brick and marble that goes into the building of Ram Mandir will have Yogi written on them, even if not visible to the eye!

But, says the Yogi, dark demanding clouds are ‘mandraying’ over and around the Ayodhya Ram Mandir. Don’t blame it on Rio. Blame it all on the farmers squatting on undisputed land ringing India’s national capital Delhi…Dilli. No, the farmers are not villain. That role goes to the dingbats in the Opposition parties.

And in the Opposition, specifically the communists in their communist parties! You see there is no love lost between Yogi Adityanath and the Opposition. And with the farmers chanting ‘Won’t budge, Come what may’, Yogi Adityanath has lost his funny bone! Quite seriously, very seriously, much to the amusement of the kisan and the communist, Yogi Adityanath has declared that the Opposition is “misleading” innocent guileless farmers.

How? By “spreading rumours about the scrapping of MSP and the mandi system.” The Yogi says farmers are being misled by the “very same people who could not tolerate the construction of a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya”, the “very same people” who “opposed the abrogation of Article 370,” which took away the special status from J&K.

“The Opposition is fighting the battle of middlemen and brokers… The communism theory of repeating a lie a hundred times to make it true will never succeed,” Yogi Adityanath asserted. “They hurt the self-respect of India, they play with the faith of India… They cannot tolerate a grand temple of Lord Ram….”

Then, of course, if nobody knew this before, Yogi Adityanath revealed that Article 370 was not abrogated to correct a historical wrong, but it was knocked off by Amit Shah to give to the people of Bareilly, Badaun, Pilibhit and Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh the right to buy land in Srinagar, Jammu and Ladakh.

Where does that leave the rest of us in India? The people of Trivandrum in Kerala, Madurai in Tamil Nadu, Burdwan in West Bengal, Kalahandi in Odisha, Aurangabad in Maharashtra, they cannot they buy land in Jammu, Srinagar and places thereabouts. If not, then the all-encompassing Home Minister of India ‘Manyavar Amit Shah’ has a very restricted and constricted view of India!

Yogi Adityanath says the opposition while hating the fact that a “Grand Ram Temple” is coming up in Ayodhya also does not like people from Bareilly, Badaun, Pilibhit and Shahjahanpur buying land in Srinagar and Jammu and Ladakh. The question is, ‘Is there anything that the Opposition likes?” The good Yogi did not clarify, but ask anybody and he/she will tell him to his face that the Opposition will like it very much if he doesn’t bring up Ram Temple into every discourse, disputes that don’t have nothing to do with Ram or Rahim.

Yogi Adityanath should be told that his “curious logic” floors no one, least of all the agitating farmers. Unhappiness over the construction of a Ram Temple cannot be the beef of the Opposition in this case of farmers much less that of the farmers.

The Yogi says the Ram Temple is the “envy of those who do not like that Bharat is becoming ‘Ek Bharat.’ Right. Great. But, pray tell Yogi-G, what’s Ram Temple, the ‘Bhavya Ram Mandir’ in Ayodhya, got to do with MSP to farmers in Singrur and in Sirsa, in Aurangabad and in Tirunelveli?

Oops! Yogi Adityanath wouldn’t know all that. He wants Bollywood in Greater Noida and Ramu Bhaiya tiling soil in Ladakh. But it’s very unlikely he thinks much about MSP and APMC and contract farming and cold storage. Yogi Adityanath is a ‘Ram Bhakt’ and SiyaPati Ram lives in his heart. If anybody should be jealous of Yogi Adityanath, it’s Lord Hanuman. And Hanuman was never a farmer! (IPA Service)