India did celebrate Yoga Day with mass participation. This is for the first time that a civil function saw defence forces participating from Saichen to Sea. The way it got wide coverage and display it was more centred around Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Before Modi, Morarji Desai, Narasimha Rao and Indira Gandhi practiced yoga but nobody had advertised and went public making self as an advocate of this well being exercise. Former Prime Minister Morarji Desai was the first one to go public with his urine therapy. For sometime people took to the therapy and then forgot about both. But the way Modi has made the event public and Govt machinery moved to project the well being therapy it looked it was PM Modi who was concerned about the event. Does it not smell of saffron agenda of Hindutava? Few months back BJP Members of Parliament getting ridiculed by the party seniors a la school kid fashion reminds one of school headmaster reprimanding students for non-performance. Senior party leader and Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu reading out the names of MPs like a obedient school teacher and Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking the Members of Parliament who were absent on the passage of Land Bill to stand up for not following the party whip. The whole show has shown BJP turning into a one-man headed party and reminds one of the Congress days when it was Indira Gandhi who ruled the roost and other leaders hardly had any say. The emergence of personality-centric political parties has some dangerous connotations.
