Jagan visiting Simhachalam Temple in Visakhapatnam
By Ramesh Kandula
Is YSR Congress Party president Jagan Mohan Reddy trying to shake off his perceived image as a representative of Christian faith? Jagan’s recent friendly overtures towards Hindu religious practices give away a clue or two in this regard.
The YSR CP president of late has been making conscious efforts to woo the section of the electorate that has a Hindu bent of mind. A Christian by faith, Jagan is nowadays not coy about participating in Hindu rituals organized by Hindu organizations. He is also not shying away from widely publicizing his new-found coziness in the company of Hindu swamijis.
The YSR family is known as devoutly Christian. Except probably for the late YSR, the rest of the family, including his wife Vijayamma, daughter Sharmila, son Jagan and his wife Bharathi, had always been prominent public personalities in Christian religious gatherings. While Vijayamma would always carry a Bible with her rain or shine, Sharmila’s husband Anil Kumar himself is a prominent missionary of the faith.
Professing Christian faith – in an overwhelmingly mainstream Hindu society – had never been a problem for the family, especially the late YSR, or to his politics. In fact, after the death of YSR, the family’s activities, including their religious practices, have become a part of media and public consumption. It became gradually evident that the Telugu Christian minorities, many of them converted SCs & STs, felt close to the politics of Jagan Mohan Reddy, mainly because of the religion.
Indeed, after Jagan Mohan Reddy floated his own YSR Congress Party, the Christian minorities have become the bedrock of the new political outfit. The public persona and body language of Vijayamma, Jagan Mohan Reddy and Sharmila, the leading campaigners for YSR CP, had an uncanny resemblance to a Christian preacher, offering succor to the hapless.
However, the election results in 2014 seem to have forced the party leadership to rethink on their image as being pro-Christian. The defeat, especially of Vijayamma in Vizag by the relatively unknown BJP candidate, came as a rude shock to the party. Many in the party subscribed to the view that the overtly Christian imagery that the party was unwittingly projecting had cost them at the hustings dearly. The rival parties succeeded in feeding the fears of the ordinary Hindu voter that the YSR Congress Party, if voted to power, could have a negative impact on Hindu way of life.
It is this image that Jagan Mohan Reddy is desperately trying to shrug off in his political landscape. Presumably as part of this effort, he took special interest to participate in the Chandi Yagam conducted by Visakha Peethadhipathi Swami Swaroopananda. After receiving his blessings, Jagan made a trip to Simhachalam Temple and made offerings to the god. It is also learnt that Jagan is himself is approaching various Hindu organizations and expressing his keenness to associate himself with ritual programs taken up for the ‘greater good of the state’. In another significant gesture, party honorary president Vijayamma, a staunch Christian, offered pooja in the Hindu tradition during the recent inauguration of YSR CP Telangana headquarters in Hyderabad.
More interestingly, Jagan is not unwilling to make a show of his new-found enthusiasm for the Hindu religious practices. His participation in these rituals is being widely publicized in the newspaper and television channel owned by him as well as in the social media. One can find any number of pictures of Jagan paying reverence to the swamijis and the gods in temples.
Unconfirmed reports evens say that Jagan did not find it too comfortable to have the huge cross adorn the palatial residence at Jubilee Hills. The fact is that the cross was actually on Sharmila’s house. But whenever Jagan’s activities are reported, the adjacent house bearing the huge cross became the staple footage for the television channels. This apparently irked Jagan, who reportedly requested his sister’s family to have cross removed to a more discreet place. But given the fact that brother Anil Kumar was a preacher of some repute, it was not to be.
The late YSR was an exception in ensuring that his religion and his politics remained separate. He was probably the only leading politician the then united Andhra Pradesh, who was a Christian by faith, but still was not perceived as anti-Hindu by the mainstream Hindu society. But for Jagan, things do not seem to be working in his favour. He is partly to blame as he did not baulk from cultivating his ‘pastor’ image in the past, which initially helped him get a foothold for political gains.
