The BJP, which till now apparently had no worthwhile agenda to encash during the ensuing crucial 2024 elections, must have shouted “EUREKA” soon after Udhaiyanidhi Stalin, the Sports Development and Youth Welfare Minister of Tamil Nadu, gave a scathing remark on Sanatan Dharma. His anger was aimed perhaps more at the fact that Sanatan Dharma promotes untouchability than at its denigration.

“Those who challenge ‘Sanatan Dharma’, the voice should reach them that till the ‘Bhakts’ are alive no one can challenge their religion,” shouted an always vitriolic and vociferous BJP Minister Smriti Irani very promptly. Her statement, as quoted by the PTI, was made to the devotees at an event that was organised by Divya Jyoti Sansthan in Delhi to celebrate Shri Krishna Janmashtmi.

Not lagging behind her, Union Minister Hardeep Puri called the remarks of Tamil Nadu Minister as “utterly disgusting”.

And, how could Dharmender Pradhan, Union Education Minister, remain silent on this ‘burning’ issue? He reportedly went a step further and engulfed I.N.D.I.A. bloc in one of his posts on X.

As per HT report, all these statements came after the Prime Minister reportedly asked his Cabinet colleagues to “fight falsehoods and attacks on an issue of faith and to put things in right context and also rely on the provisions of the Constitution that do not denigrate any religion”.

However, while disposing of a petition in a similar matter, Justice N Seshasayee of Madras High Court, said that Sanatan Dharma is “a set of eternal duties” that forms the bedrock of the ancient Hindu way of life. However, untouchability, the High Court said, “cannot be tolerated” even if it is seen as permitted somewhere in the principles”  of Sanatan Dharma.

While raging a war of words to save Sanatan Dharma, the BJP forgets that only recently the Prime Minister, while celebrating the 200th birthday of great Indian social reformer Swamy Dayananda Sarasvati, had hailed his contributions towards fighting against social discrimination and untouchability.

Swamy Dayananda Saraswati, a strong believer of vedas’ supremacy over the later Hindu Sanskrit texts, perhaps was the first Hindu leader who rejected the basic dogmas of Sanatan Dharma, and formed a progressive Hindu Arya-Samaj in 1875, which was formally established on June 24, 1877.

Will the newly-found religious agenda of saving the Sanatan Dharma from allegedly being “demolished”, particularly by I.N.D.I.A., be of any electoral help to the BJP this time again?

Abraham Lincoln’s oft quoted phrase, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people for some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time,” perhaps would fit here very well in this context.