BJP - Bharatiya Killjoy Party

The tragiccomic drama involving Shah Rukh Khan and his son Aryan shows the Bharatiya Janata Party has become a killjoy a term for a person who deliberately spoils the enjoyment of others Whether you smoke hashish or marijuana for recreational purposes or savour meat delicacies or want to wear jeans or are in an interfaith relationship or engage in sex out of wedlock the BJP invokes laws or rallies its troll army to take the fizz out of your life Or make you feel you are a westernised unIndianThere cannot be another person as culturally rooted as former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav In his autobiography Lalu reminisces about his days as president of the Patna University Students Union A rival group comprising Sushil Kumar Modi and Ravi Shankar Prasad both BJP leaders today complained to Jayaprakash Narayan who had by 1974 galvanised students to protest against Indira Gandhi that Lalu drank liquorJP summoned Lalu who confessed ldquoI drink toddy at times because I am from a village background where toddydrinking is commonrdquo Nervous Lalu says he ratted on Shivanand Tiwari currently in Rashtriya Janata Dal who was known to smoke ganja JP smiled and advised Lalu to quit drinking as he was emerging as a role model for studentsSmoking pot was and is a rite of passage for college students even though possession and consumption of narcotics became illegal in 1985 when the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances NDPS Act was enacted Since Aryanrsquos friends were caught allegedly possessing narcotics they must be punished Hindutva supporters insist But the Act was designed to punish drug traffickers not consumers Section 64A for instance says a person possessing a small amount of grass or hashishmdashup to 1000 grams of the former and up to 100 grams of the lattermdashwill be shielded from prosecution in case he or she volunteers to undergo deaddiction This is why the police until the crackdown on Bollywood preferred to extract money from those caught with a small amount of cannabis rather than booking themThe travails of Aryan and his friends will now make anyone lighting up a reefer look out for killjoys in uniform And at the same time still smoke weed to show his or her contempt for a paternalistic state caught in a time warpThis was precisely the response of women who flooded social media with their photos in ripped jeans after former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat criticised the sartorial style In 2019 a backlash in the Rajya Sabha prompted BJP MP DP Vats to withdraw his suggestion of revising the rule requiring women in uniformed services to wear the ldquoshirt tucked in under the belt and pantsrdquo In 2016 Gyan Dev Ahuja a BJP MLA from Rajasthan said Delhirsquos Jawaharlal Nehru University staff finds 3000 used condoms daily ldquoThe misdeeds they commit with our sisters and daughters thererdquo he lamented displaying his disapproval of premarital sex Ahuja was denied a BJP ticket in the 2018 Rajasthan Assembly electionsBut BJP MP Tejasvi Suryarsquos career has flourished despite tweets such as this ldquo9537 Arab women have never had an orgasm in the last few hundred years Every mother has produced kids as an act of sex and not of loverdquo The worst of killjoys is the prurient one who harbours fantasies of hateRashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh boss Mohan Bhagwat recently said ldquoHow do Hindu girls and boys adopt other religions for petty selfishness for marriagerdquo Bhagwat is oblivious of the sociological term ldquoconversion of conveniencerdquo which enables interfaith couples to appease their killjoy parents insistent upon placing religion over loveNo wonder last yearrsquos Tanishq advertisement depicting an interfaith couple happy in a Muslim family had to be withdrawn because Hindutva footsoldiers thought it promoted love jihad The makers of a recent ad showing a samesex couple celebrating Karwa Chauth were perhaps too stoned to remember that literalism has become a national bug Chief Minister Adityanathrsquos obsession with vegetarianism recently had him ban the sale of liquor and meat in 10 sq km area in MathuraVrindavan now declared a pilgrimage site He has replicated the ban on nonvegetarian food imposed in Haridwar and Rishikesh in Uttarakhand through a 1956 government notification In 2004 the Supreme Court also upheld the ban on eggs in the two townsYet meat could be sourced from outside Haridwar town In March the ban was extended to the entire district of Haridwar and slaughterhouses were shut down This order was challenged in the Uttarakhand High Court which in July cited surveys to show that 72 per cent of Uttarakhandrsquos population and 70 per cent of Indians were nonvegetarian The court said the ban was a matter concerning the fundamental rights of citizens not just Muslims ldquoThe question is whether a citizen has the right to decide his own diet or whether that will be decided by the staterdquoIndeed for humans to choose is to be Forever lecturing people on how they should live and enjoy the BJP has become the Bharatiya Killjoy Party Diwali Mubarak Apologies Diwali Ki Shubhkamnayen to you enjoy until killjoys waylay you And please use WhatsApp judiciously The writer is a senior journalist Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper