Shri Modi Doesn't Approve of His Photos on Vax Certificates and Train Tickets. He Must Tell His Followers That
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Shri Modi Doesn't Approve of His Photos on Vax Certificates and Train Tickets. He Must Tell His Followers That
Badri Raina
48 minutes ago
The power of greatness is often caricatured by ill-educated well-wishers who take into their own bouncer hands the gumption to enlarge the colossus into a demi-god.
An illustration showing a train reservation slip with Modi's face on it. Photo: X/@Kashish__singh_
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The following is satire.
For a decade or so now, an in-house conspiracy to embarrass the prime minister has been afoot.
Remember how they pasted his picture on COVID-19 vaccine certifications? And on school satchels? Not to speak of every page of every news outlet, although positioning his head just a millimetre above that of pretenders who draw breath from the slightest tilt of his eyebrow.
And now time comes when these mischievous satraps have him gracing even such quotidian pieces of authorisation as railway booking tickets.
This shameful project-sell stems of course from their notion that Shri Narendra Modi is a parvenu strongman who, like all upstart belligerents, likes to see the whole realm plastered in their insecure self-image.
And there is the blunder.
What these zealots do not know is that Shri Modi, adulation of the ancient, is no light-weight tin-horn in search of publicity, but an old aristocrat who traces his greatness back to even non-biological originations.
Always an antagonist to new-fangled western ways, our numero uno remains deeply mortified by this exhibitionism thrust on him by his so-neophyte well-wishers.
Which raises the question:
Why does he not, with one syllable from his puissant oratory, put a stop to this upstartism which not only makes him deeply uncomfortable but also enables world-watchers to draw comparisons of him and his greatness with the likes of lowly punks such as Donald Trump – a comparison that causes such hurt to our sanatan loftiness.
Ah, easier said than done.
Excruciatingly discomforting as it must be for Shri Modi to see himself thus peddled on all sorts of commonplace corners, inevitably advertising his self-aggrandisement which he loathes secretly, great office puts such paradoxical fetters on the exercise of authoritative will.
Were he to at one stroke lambast all those in-housers who do him such disfavour, imagine the way the boat of office may then be rocked, giving room for malicious tongues to say, aha he knew it all the time but did nothing.
Imagine also how such retreat from a cruelly imposed dissemination might cause his party to go into a funk, not knowing how to justify the praxis of over a commercial decade.
And, should he do nothing to stymie the enthusiasm of the mischief mongers who seek to undercut the scale of his classical statue by this profering his image to all and sundry everyday of every ordinary week, the dent to what history may make of these going on also troubles him no end methinks.
Thus is the power of greatness so often caricatured by ill-educated well-wishers who take into their own bouncer hands the gumption to enlarge the colossus into a demi-god.
Sadly, we sans-culottes may not know how best to admonish the great leader in this predicament, except to say we know how humble your heart is, how self-critical your mind and we know those that follow in devolution or self-interest can often be blind.
Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.
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When Turkey's highest court ruled in 2020 to reconvert the Hagia Sophia from a museum into a mosque, global reactions were swift – critiquing what many viewed as a retreat from secularism and an assertion of majoritarian identity over pluralist heritage. Now, a similar controversy gets underway in Egypt, where a court ruling on May 28, 2025, declared that the 1,500-year-old St. Catherine's Monastery and its surrounding lands are 'public property' of the state, purportedly ending its historical autonomy. This ruling has triggered a rift between Cairo and Athens and provoked deep concern among the global Orthodox Christian community. Despite Egypt's formal assurances that the monastery's religious character will be preserved, the court's assertion of state ownership indicates a shift with far-reaching implications, not only for the monks who inhabit the site, but for the principle of religious custodianship itself. 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Following the Arab conquest of Egypt in the 7th century, the monastery was granted a written covenant of protection (ʿ ahd) reportedly issued by Prophet Muhammad himself, and transcribed by Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib. Though the original manuscript was later taken to Istanbul by Sultan Selim I during the Ottoman conquest, a copy remains housed in the monastery's archive. This covenant, promising the security of the monks, their property, and their freedom of worship, became a touchstone for interfaith legal protection under Islamic governance, an example of how early Islamic legal thought could accommodate pluralism. This protective tradition was reaffirmed over centuries by successive Islamic dynasties, including the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Ayyubids, Mamluks, and Ottomans. These regimes issued firmans (royal decrees) upholding the Prophet's covenant, thereby creating an enduring chain of recognition that spanned religious, linguistic, and political divides. 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The Islamic legal framework thus became a custodian of Christian monasticism, demonstrating a rare case of juridical pluralism, in which Islamic courts institutionalised the preservation of a non-Islamic religious community. Thousands of historical manuscripts, written in Arabic, Greek, Syriac, Coptic, and Georgian, remain preserved within the monastery's library, some dating back to the 4th and 5th centuries, including the famed Codex Sinaiticus, one of the earliest complete copies of the Christian Bible. These texts reflect a shared intellectual heritage, with scholars from both Christian and Muslim worlds contributing to the preservation and study of sacred knowledge. The library is considered second in global significance only to the Vatican Library. Against this deeply interlocked legal and religious history, the 2025 Egyptian court ruling that classifies the monastery and its lands as 'public state property' appears legally ahistorical and morally discontinuous. 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