In a country of 1.5 billion people with myriad of problems like sky-high inflation, multi decade high unemployment, rapidly increasing income and wealth inequality, falling apart social and cultural fabric of the society as evident by the communal violence in the state of Manipur, criminal lynching of innocent by the so-called cow vigilantes, increasing violent insurgency in the state of Jammu & Kashmir where militants are killing army soldiers like flies every day, with increasing border tension with neighboring countries like China, Pakistan, and Nepal, etc., increasing natural calamities in the form of floods, landslides, earthquakes, etc., the Indian government and media is giving all its attention to a non-issue controversy of Tirupati temple offering sweet balls finding pig and cow meat in it!
In this article I want to discuss how Narendra Modi government’s economic policies are responsible for this adulteration of temple offering.
Since coming to power in 2014, Modi government has captured one institution after another to cement its grips on power in New Delhi. The most important institution they have captured is country’s central bank RBI (the Reserve Bank of India). RBI has always been a government’s central bank, but its governors used to work little bit more independently under the previous governments. Knowing the importance of the RBI for funding his dreams of totalitarian power, Modi targeted the RBI from the get-go and forced its previously independent minded governors like Ragahuram Rajan, Urjit Patel, Viral Acharya, etc., out of their positions to replace them with his confidant bureaucrat lackey Shaktikanta Das. In the history of the RBI Das is the first governor who doesn’t hold a degree in economics; he is a history major and a career bureaucrat. He is basically a yes man.
Modi and his RSS backers understand that to fund their power dreams full control of the RBI is necessary because RBI holds the monopoly power over issuance of money (currency notes rupees). Using that endless supply of money, Modi and Shah can enrich their crony corporatist friends like Adani and Ambani who in turn will fund Modi’s BJP election winning juggernaut machine. In my previous article I have discussed how this fascist nexus between the Modi government and corporate tycoons works.
After this important background we are now ready to understand how Modi’s economic policies have forced the Hindu temples to use substandard ingredients to prepare their offerings.
Figure 1 below shows the amount of money Modi government has printed in last 10 years of their rule. Previousgovernments combined printed total 21.9 thousand billion rupees until Modi came to power in May 2014. After coming to power Modi government has printed 3 times more money (64.1 thousand billion rupees) than all previous combined governments!
As we know, this creation of money out of thin air by the RBI at the behest of Modi government is nothing but inflation.Henry Hazlitt said,
Inflation is an increase in the quantity of money and credit. Its chief consequence is soaring prices. Therefore inflation—if we misuse the term to mean the rising prices themselves—is caused solely by printing more money. For this the government’s monetary policies are entirely responsible.
As Hazlitt said, the chief consequence of inflation is soaring prices. Since Modi came to power the prices of all consumer and producer goods have gone through the roof. For example, when Modi came to power in May 2014 the price of one liter of petrol was around 73 rupees, and today it is more than 100 rupees. The price of an ounce of gold in 2014 was around 25000 rupees, and today it is 75000 rupees. Similary the price of cow ghee has gone manifold up after Modi came to power. If we look at this analysis from the money side then it is the currency rupee that has lost a lot of its purchasing power since Modi came to power. Because money is a commonly accepted medium of exchange when it loses its value/purchasing power because of central bank’s inflationary policy of creating so many of it out of thin air, every good trading against that money commodity becomes costlier. It is far better to say that the Indian rupee has become cheaper.
This cheaper rupee has forced all of us to look for cheaper substitutes of the consumer and producer goods that we were consuming before Modi came to power. For example, when the price of A2 Gir cow milk ghee was 100 rupees/kg temples were using this pure cow ghee to make their offerings. But after Modi’s inflationary policies came into effect, the same cow ghee is now costing hundreds of rupees more making it unaffordable for most of the temples. This forced temples like the Tirupati temple to buy cheaper substitutes of this pure cow ghee. And as we know cheaper price ghee is likely going to be of cheap quality. To cut the cost of temple operation due to Modi’s inflationary policies temples had no choice but to buy adulterated ghee. And as we found out now, this adulterated ghee was made by using cheap ingredients like the beef tallow and pig fat.
As we saw above, laws of economics also affect the temples! Modi’s irresponsible inflationary policies resulted in millions of Hindus eating beef tallow and pig fat without their knowledge. Narendra Modi who showcases himself as the defender of the Hindu faith (dharma) is responsible for violating their dharma! This is what happens when human beings try to find their savior in a human figure like Narendra Modi. Trusting Modi to defend Hindu dharma is like trusting a fox to defend the hen house! Modi is a career politician who has mastered the art of fooling and using people for his parasitic political survival. His demagoguery has cost Hindus their dharma.
