Jana Sena Party chief Pawan Kalyan has adopted the avatar of the protector of Sanatana dharma, and speaks multiple languages so that his message is not lost in translation.
Published Oct 09, 2024 | 4:00 PM ⚊ Updated Oct 09, 2024 | 4:00 PM
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Like a butterfly that comes out of its cocoon, Jana Sena Party chief Pawan Kalyan is now fluttering around the political firmament with saffron wings.
Though not a BJP leader, his appearance makes him look like one. He wears red, sports vermilion on his forehead, and presents himself like a sage complete with long-flowing hair. He goes into hysterics while claiming that he is a petitioner of the Sanatana Hindu Dharma. “I am an unapologetic sanatani Hindu,’ he proclaimed on Tirumala hills last week.
No longer does his appearance conjure up action scenes in flicks like Gabbar Singh or any other potboilers that made him the ‘Power Star’ among his fans. No longer are there any sheepish smiles, he is known for. He is now talking about Sanatana dharma and is making himself heard above the din of everything mundane.
At his Varahi Sabha in Tirupati, he spoke in five languages – Telugu, Sanskrit, English, Tamil, and Hindi to ensure that no one in India missed the point that he was a hardcore Sanatana dharma protagonist, ready to lay down his temporal life or his ephemeral possessions or his transient positions of power.
He had said he came to Tirupati to fight those harming the cause of Sanatana dharma and that he would not keep quiet if anyone tried to ridicule or make light of his dharma. He also came down like a tonne of bricks on the Indian judiciary for allegedly supporting those hurting Sanatana dharma.
Why this sudden change? If one looks into his past, a different Pawan Kalyan could be seen. He used to assert his faith in leftist thinking. He used to eulogize Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara and the influence of the Argentine in his life.
He remained friends with the CPI and CPI(M) and claimed that he was above religion and caste. He had said that caste was anathema to him and that he did not belong to any religion. He even said he had his daughter baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church.
When Pawan Kalyan debuted in politics as the chief of the youth wing of his brother Chiranjeevi’s short-lived Praja Rajyam Party ahead of the 2009 elections, he did not have a veneer of any “ism.” He used to say his aim was to see the last of the Congress. He said he would chase the Congressmen after yanking off their panchalu.
But in a matter of three years, his brother’s Praja Rajyam disappeared into the Congress. Pawan Kalyan, a dissenter, left politics and returned to his career in films.
As though hibernating, he remained in films till 2014. He founded Jana Sena Party as elections approached. By then, he was not only pally with left parties like the Communists but also with the far-right BJP and centrist parties like the TDP.
He never bothered how he could reconcile with all of them. The communists felt that he was their man, and the saffron warriors had claimed that he was theirs. He did not contest the elections but supported N Chandrababu Naidu who was in the NDA then.
Naidu won the election, and Pawan Kalyan had said he was not in politics for power but to only question even if TDP which he supported in the election takes up any policy that went against the interests of the people.
In the days when he used to talk about communism, he used to hold Che Guevara in high esteem. He had said in one of his tweets then: “As long as inequality, oppression & tyranny exist in this world the fighting spirit of ‘Che’ continues to exist. Remembering ‘ Che’ on the day of his ‘Last Breath.’”
Ahead of the 2019 Assembly elections, he decided to contest against the TDP and YSRCP. He teamed up with BSP, CPI, and CPI(M). BSP chief Mayawati had wished that Pawan Kalyan would become the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh while kickstarting his campaign in Visakhapatnam in April 2019.
In return, he said he wanted to see Mayawati as the prime minister of India. Pawan Kalyan spoke highly about BR Ambedkar’s ideals. When the results were declared, both Jana Sena and TDP were decimated.
When the 2024 elections arrived, a now-politically wise Pawan Kalyan, realised that the enemy — YS Jagan Mohan Reddy —was too strong for him to take head-on and that he needed Naidu.
By then, his hatred for Jagan Mohan Reddy was as intense as that of Naidu who was suffering under relentless pounding by the YSRCP regime which culminated in his arrest in the skill development scam in 2023.
The two leaders decided to stand together and despite the YSRCP’s efforts to foil their friendship, it stuck and finally made YSRCP a mincemeat in the elections restricting its strength to just 11 in a House of 175 members.
Pawan Kalyan, who was in the NDA, played a major role in getting Naidu also into the saffron fold. Though the BJP was averse to having the TDP in the NDA, it allowed the regional party in as signals became clear that it may not win the election on its own this time at the national level. Finally, it was Naidu’s TDP that emerged as one of the two parties propping up the NDA at the Centre.
In a token of gratitude, Naidu made Pawan Kalyan the deputy chief minister and when everything was going fine, came the disrupter: Naidu’s off-the-cuff remarks that Tirumala laddus were made with ghee which had animal fat in it.
It was Naidu’s casual remark to further weaken Jagan Mohan Reddy politically. He could have left Jagan alone, as he was licking his election-inflicted wounds, sitting in his home occasionally in Tadepalli near Vijayawada, and spending most of his time in Bengaluru.
Even then, Naidu wanted to see Jagan destroyed without any trace politically and used the suspicion of adulteration of Tirumala laddu as a device to beat him. He probably did not know that it would turn into a maelstrom that would rock the entire nation.
As Naidu began finding ways to tame the tiger he had unleashed with his animal fat-in-laddu comment, Pawan Kalyan seemed to have seen his chance to entrench himself in Andhra politics.
Till now, Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena has been seen as a group of his fans and his appeal was mostly with the youth. He did not favour curry with the people till the recent elections when a combination of forces, like the dictatorial rule of YSRCP, made people support the TDP-JSP-BJP axis.
The JSP had no sound substratum and it depended mostly on the glamour of Pawan Kalyan. Now the laddu controversy has erupted and Pawan Kalyan suddenly discarded his past avatar of secularism and commitment to communist ideals.
He donned the robes of a sage who had taken birth overnight to protect Sanatana dharma which he felt was under threat. He undertook an 11-day deeksha to atone for the sins committed by the previous YSRCP dispensation which “allowed” the commission of acts of sacrilege at the temple.
There was no answer to why Pawan Kalyan should atone for someone else’s assumed sins, but he did. At the most, it should have been left to the priests who run the temple. But he took the deeksha, went to the Kanaka Durga temple in Vijayawada, and washed the steps.
After ending his deeksha, he addressed his first mammoth public meeting where he appeared before the people in his new avatar, that of the protector of Sanatana dharma where he called for the constitution of a board to protect the dharma and launched a vicious attack on all those including Indian judiciary for the affronts on Sanatana dharma.
He targeted Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin and Congress top leader Rahul Gandhi for making fun of Sanatana dharma or equating it to the epidemic.
But why should he present himself as the protector of Santana’s dharma? After Pawan Kalyan took up the cause, the political mosaic of the state had suddenly become saffron-coloured. He wears the saffron taint more on his sleeve than a BJP leader, forcing actor Prakash Raj to liken him to a new convert who wears more religious marks than those who are practicing the religion.
This has led to speculation that Pawan Kalyan is moving closer to the BJP and the latter trying to spread Hindutva through him in Andhra Pradesh.
Andhra Pradesh was never a fertile ground for Hindutva. The people refuse to be provoked on religious issues. It is a non-issue for them just like in all the south Indian states.
Even in Karnataka, religious fanaticism is confined only to a small segment. As the terrain in South India has remained more or less Hindutva-free, the BJP might want to spread its ideology with the help of Pawan Kalyan. Though he is at present in another party there is no guarantee that one day the BJP would not gobble him up.
The speech that Pawan Kalyan delivered at the Varahi Sabha made people suspect that there was an invisible force behind him that was making him speak the way he did.
The Varahi declaration was not warranted in Andhra though the Sanatana dharma issue came to the fore after allegations that the Tirumala laddu has been adulterated with ghee containing animal fat.
If Pawan Kalyan’s target was only Jagan there was no need for him to make it a pan-India issue, by speaking in five languages and appealing to audiences of different segments of society on the need to protect Santana dharma.
If he was speaking on behalf of Jana Sena, there was no need for him to address the audience outside Andhra. That he should bring in Udhayanidhi Stalin and Rahul Gandhi into the picture made one wonder if the BJP was using him as its cat’s paw.
There has been intense speculation that Pawan Kalyan’s present avatar is only a passing phase before he finally emerges as a Hindutva campaigner for the BJP in the southern states. Pawan Kalyan with his film image managed to grab eyeballs in Andhra and now the state’s political tapestry is changing with people thinking of religion.
If Pawan Kalyan manages to pave the way for the entry of Hindutva in states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala besides Telangana, most of the BJP’s job will be done.
(Edited by Majnu Babu).
