Mujra, Makeup, and the Camera: India’s Longest-Running Solo Performance

 

Mujra, Makeup, and the Camera: India’s Longest-Running Solo Performance

Hindi Version: https://rakeshinsightfulgaze.blogspot.com/2025/12/blog-post_18.html

Imagine the final stage.

A prison courtyard. Floodlights. Iron bars replacing camera tripods. Narendra Modi, dressed for mujra, anklets heavy, makeup imperfect, tears carefully rehearsed. The performance continues, because performance is all that was ever learned.

This is not punishment. This is familiarity.

For decades, the nation was trained to confuse governance with choreography. Mujra, wardrobe changes, dramatic pauses, selective silence, and an unbreakable relationship with the camera. In functioning democracies, these belong to entertainers. In India, they were mistaken for leadership.

Modi’s story was marketed as moral folklore, beginning at a tea stall no one has ever seen and supported by a master’s degree no one has ever verified. Both survived because India learned long ago that belief is cheaper than evidence. Myth requires loyalty. Facts require effort.

What never required imagination was the spectacle. Governance was optional. Visibility was survival. When policy failed, symbolism compensated. When questions emerged, nationalism drowned them out. When attention drifted, a new costume arrived. And when accountability approached, the music rose and the mujra began.

In the imagined prison performance, he cries again. The tears fall right on cue. He has cried before. For soldiers. For cameras. For elections. Tears were never an emotional response. They were a technique.

The audience once sat in living rooms. Now it is wardens and history.

The rules of the show were always clear. Do not interrupt. Do not question. Own two buffaloes and one might quietly disappear to a more obedient RSS household. Language was regulated. Jewelry became political evidence. Fear was maintained with bedtime stories about the opposition, while wealth moved upward with administrative efficiency. Adani never needed a costume. Power dressed him well enough.

Internationally, the actor experimented with intimacy. He hugged Vladimir Putin like a soulmate rediscovered, despite the small inconvenience that before 2014, Putin likely had no idea who Modi was. History, however, bends easily under lighting. Perhaps they were separated at a Kumbh Mela. The past was rewritten nightly.

Religion was upgraded into a geopolitical tool. Havan ceremonies were performed to influence Donald Trump’s election. When America eventually realized the cost of that experiment, India had already offered a solution: blame the divine. America enjoys outsourcing guilt. India now offers it as a service.

Some nations elected actors. America tried it with Reagan. India perfected the genre. Modi was not merely an actor. He was the entire production ecosystem. Scriptwriter, director, editor, distributor. He repeated dialogue until it hardened into truth. Contradictions were drowned in applause. Memory was disciplined into obedience.

Parliament was reduced to a background prop. Appear briefly. Exit strategically. Especially when Rahul Gandhi or Priyanka Gandhi entered the frame. Real debate disrupts pacing. Mujra requires control.

This performance inspired millions. If a tea seller could become Prime Minister, why not anyone else? Education became ornamental. Degrees became theoretical. You could invent one, name it creatively, and ensure no university taught it. That eliminated follow-up questions. In modern India, confidence replaced credentials.

The system adapted smoothly. You could lie without shame and still rise. You could silence victims, bury evidence, and hire loyalty. Stories were managed. Courage was punished. If someone spoke, arrest them. If they persisted, erase their career.

Pradeep Sharma learned this thoroughly. Judge Loya learned it fatally. Arvind Kejriwal, Sanjay Singh, Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain, and others learned that the Constitution designed by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar assumed integrity among those entrusted to enforce it. That assumption did not age well.

Agencies meant to protect democracy learned a new role: stage management. Had they remembered their original script, Modi’s political career would likely have ended during his tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat. Prison would not have been metaphor. It would have been procedure.

The Congress government deserves acknowledgment. Their hesitation, their fear of electoral discomfort, and their refusal to enforce accountability did not prevent collapse. It delayed it politely. History rarely rewards politeness.

Now return to the image.

The prison mujra continues. Modi performs, crying again, because crying always worked. Anklets echo against concrete. There is no crowd now, only records. No applause, only transcripts. No camera to forgive him, only time.

The tragedy is not that the performance ended behind bars.

The tragedy is that for so long, an entire nation mistook the performance for leadership and applause for consent.

The lights finally dim.

And for the first time, the mujra is performed without an audience willing to forget.

Editor’s Note: This image is not about revenge. It is about memory. About what happens when performance outlives truth, when spectacle replaces responsibility, and when a nation mistakes applause for consent. The mujra does not end in prison because of injustice alone. It ends there because, eventually, every performance runs out of cameras, and history does not clap.