By Soroor Ahmed for TwoCircles.net
There is a unique short-cut route to sainthood in Bihar. Vatican must learn from it.
There is no need to wait for five years or so after death for a person to be declared as saint.
Just join the Rashtriya Janata Dal and after a few unlawful and criminal acts leave it. You would automatically become saint: instead of any Pope, it will be the media persons who will formally ‘declare’ the said person as a saint.
Now, no question would be asked for any illegal act committed in the past. You would be provided Y-category security by none else but the Union home ministry. You would roam about in helicopter and ‘sermonise’ people about the misdeeds of chief minister Nitish Kumar and RJD president Lalu Prasad.
The prime minister of the country would give you time, not worrying about the fact that the gentleman in question has spent years behind bars on the charge of murdering the then CPI (M) MLA and a very popular figure of Purnea district, Ajit Sarkar, in 1998. After all, what is wrong in according welcome to him as the court has acquitted him?
Pappu Yadav realised ‘saintliness’ within himself days after leaving RJD in 2015. In fact, he had joined the party after his release from jail in 2013 following his acquittal.
Pappu suddenly started feeling that Sushil Modi (SuMo) is no more pouring venom against him, nor is the media after him for, among other misdeeds, ‘terrorising’ the doctors of Kosi belt.
Now he is blue-eyed boy of the Bihar’s opposition parties and after SuMo of BJP, gets highest coverage in the media. Poor Prem Kumar, the leader of opposition in the state Assembly and MLA for 26 years stand nowhere.
Pappu has often been an Independent MLA or MP. But he has now realised that whenever he had joined RJD––be it in 2004 or 2014––he and Shahabuddin used to be called as the two sides of the same coin. So get elected on RJD ticket and then leave it. It is another thing that his wife, Ranjit Ranjan, has her feet firmly planted in the Congress.
Sadhu Yadav is not so lucky. Yet he has also become a saint as he had left the Lalu Parivar and have come close to the Sangh Parivar via a brief stay in the Gandhi Parivar, that is, Congress party.
Narendra Modi, as the prime ministerial candidate in 2013, threw the door wide open to greet him in Ahmedabad. All the news that he had once used his muscle- and gun-power against a bureaucrat is wrong. No, he was never close to the Siwan don, Mohammad Shahabuddin. Lalu Yadav is not at all his relative. See, he has not invited the latter or Rabri Devi, to his daughter’s marriage. He is a saint.
To err is human. So he might have committed some minor mistakes in the past. One should forgive and forget them.
Then there is Anant Singh, Anand Mohan, Munna Shukla, Rajan Tiwari, Rama Singh, Suraj Bhan and Sunil Pandey; the last name on this list is the alleged mastermind of killing of his own mentor, Ranvir Sena chief Brahmeshwar Singh alias Mukhiyaji. Goons took Patna and Ara to hostage looting and destroying properties after his killing on June 1, 2012. No follow up, no action, no probe for these saintly acts even when the loss run into crores of rupees.
The name of some other saints-in-the-making, for example, Anand Mohan and Munna Shukla, figured prominently in the lynching of the then Dalit district magistrate of Gopalganj, G Krishnaiah in December 1994. The poor and dedicated officer was attacked by a mob allegedly led by these two strongmen. They were protesting with the body of dreaded Chotan Shukla, who was killed by a rival gang in Vaishali district on the same day. Seeing an official coming from Gopalganj and on way to Patna the mob attacked and brutally killed him.
Others like Suraj Bhan, Rajan Tiwari etc got acquitted after years in jail in the former minister Brij Bihari Prasad murder case. No one would raise their name even though Brij Bihari’s wife, Rama Devi, is now a BJP MP.
And then comes Anant Singh, who has the distinction of publicly calling the then chief minister, Jitan Ram Manjhi, a ‘pagal’ (mad). He once even threatened the Dalit CM of dire consequences. The poor chap now does not raise the issue.
All these guys are saint-in-the-making and not saint. They may remain so for ever. If they want to become full-fledged saint they must jump on to the Lalu bandwagon and then abandon it. The next day they would be declared saints.
Another gentleman, who missed this historic opportunity of becoming saint on September 10, 2016, six days after Mother Teresa was declared so, is Shahabuddin. He came out with a blazing colour from jail and issued an immortal statement: Nitish Kumar is the chief minister of circumstances. He followed it later by equating Nitish with Madhu Koda, former Jharkhand CM. But one sentence spoiled his whole prospect of becoming a saint. “Lalu Prasad has always been my leader.”
Imagine what would have happened had he taken the name of Narendra Modi instead of Lalu.
St Shahabuddin on line with St Pappu.