Amit Shah and his entourage of BJP netas who descended on Communist-ruled Kerala to “save the people” with a “janaraksha yatra” became the latest target of the by-now famous Malayalee memes and trolls on social media.
Having tried and failed at taking a bite at the politically tough cookie that is minority-loving, beef-eating Kerala, the BJP organised the yatra positing to the national TV-watching public that Hindus were endangered in the Communist-ruled state which has “jihadi tendencies”. The BJP’s claims are that RSS activists are being murdered by Communists, whereas fact is that both sides have suffered loss of lives due to age-old rivalry, especially in north Kerala.
Malayalees, of course, used their trademark irreverent wit on social media to express exactly what they felt about the BJP’s politically-slanted statements.
So as BJP’s national president Amit Shah began the ‘Janaraksha Yatra’, a state-wide march from the Communist-stronghold of Kannur, all ropes were cut loose.
One troll showed Shah telephoning PM Modi to tell how tasty Kerala beef dishes are. In the later part, the Prime Minister asks him to get him some as “parcel” on returning from Kerala.
In another one, Kummanam is received with ‘Kya, Kya, Kya’ when asked to bring tender coconut for Amit Shah, hinting that the participants of the rally were Hindi-speaking migrant labourers (implying the party had no ground support in Kerala) hired by the party to make a show of strength.
When Shah abruptly left for Delhi before the march reached Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s home town, the term “Amittadi” was soon coined, meaning the habit of leaving the stage suddenly without any indication.
If ‘Kummanadi’ entered the urban lexicon after state BJP chief Kummanam Rajashekharan’s ride, “uninvited”, on the inauguration of the Kochi Metro a few months ago, it seems ‘Amittadi’ is following suit, thanks to Amit Shah’s disappearing act.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself got a taste, last year, of what happens in cyberspace when you lock horns with a Malayalee. He infuriated the state’s people by comparing Kerala, whose human development indices are of global-best standards, to the poor African country Somalia last May. At the time the hashtag #PoMoneModi was the trend.
This time it was the turn of Yogi Adityanath. The Chief Minister of the state in which about 60 children died within 72 hours in a state-run hospital in his own Lok Sabha constituency of Gorakhpur due to lack of oxygen, imprudently lectured Kerala that it should learn from Uttar Pradesh how to run hospitals.
His remark galvanised even the politically-neutral in Kerala into action. They minced no words when they tweeted with the trending hashtag #KnaappanYogi, loosely translated into someone who is incompetent and pompous.
Twitter and Facebook posts ridiculed the state of affairs in UP, saying cows got better medical care than humans there, and that Adityanath had come to Kerala to see for the first time what homes with toilets looked like.
One meme showed Yogi Adityanath inviting Kummanam Rajasekharan to the railway track at 5 o clock in the morning (indicating they had no access to toilets for the morning ablutions), when the latter asks him for a ‘private’ meeting to discuss party strategy.
Knowingly or not, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan himself joined in by thanking his UP counterpart for letting the country know about the low Infant Mortality Rate in Kerala compared to the national average. Kerala’s IMR is 10, whereas the national average is 34 and that of Uttar Pradesh is as high as 43 deaths per thousand births.
Here are some of the other hilarious memes circulating on social media targeting BJP’s Janaraksha Yatra:
The state-wide campaign by the BJP, which started from Payannur in Kannur is to end on October 17 in the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram. Wonder what else is in store on cyberspace.