On January 19, six recently bought Rafale spurts from France were ate by Greece. In a grand TV broadcast, the first six out of the 24 Dassault- made spurts were captured arriving in the country flying past the Parthenon Temple atop the Acropolis hill. The communication” Drink home” beamed from the control palace as the spurts approached the Tanagra airbase.
At the airbase, a religious form was held to mark their appearance. Before the big handover, Unqualified preachers performed prayers for the spurts and blessed them with holy water. The same blessings were also passed on to Defence officers before the spurts were handed to the Air Force. While the religious form was seen as a sign of warm hello in Greece, it’s hard to not recall the adverse response that had erupted in 2019 when our Rafale spurts were ate by the Defence Minister in a traditional Shastra Puja.
Rajnath Singh’s Shastra Puja called ‘communal’
On October 8, 2019, when India was handed over the first Rafale combat aircraft, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh performed a Shastra puja at the Merignac air base, his action sparking a huge’ collaborative’ debate. Singh had performed puja on the aircraft, blessed it with an Om tilak and laid flowers and a coconut, just before he took a 35- nanosecond ramble in the two-seater spurt. This puja was performed on the occasion of Dussehra, marking the end of the Navaratri jubilee.
. Still, back in India, the simple act of the Defence Minister to recognize the fighter aircraft was met with a huge uproar with Opposition parties raising questions on the Hindu tradition Congress calls move a’tamasha It started with the Congress party calling the move’tamasha’to invite people. While elderly party leader Mallikarjun Kharge dubbed the puja as’theatrics’, expert leader Salman Khurshid editorialized that it would have been better if Rafale would have got the blessings of’all persuasions’, rather than one religious power.
NCP compares Defence Minister to’ truck motorist’who hangs nimbu-mirchiAt a press conference ahead of the Maharashtra choices, NCP principal Sharad Pawar mocked the Rafale shastra puja and drew a parallel between the Defence Minister and truck motorists, who hang bomb and chilli to ward off the evil eye.”What can one say when bomb-chilli is hung on Rafale aircraft with the idea of guarding it from curse just like it’s hung on a recently- bought truck,” mocked Pawar.
READ| Congress forgetting Shastra Puja by Gursharan Kaur in rush to attack?The Defence Minister had responded gracefully to the critics saying that indeed people in France, who belonged to other persuasions had accepted his act at their own airbase.”On the day of Vijayadashami, when I performed armament deification in France and wrote’Om’on Rafale and tied the thread of defense, some Congress leaders sitting then started getting worried. Whereas in France people of all persuasions were present and all were cooperating completely,”he said.
READ| Pawar mocks Rajnath for using’nimbu mirchi’in Rafale Shastra PujaLatterly, a’Sarva Dharma’puja with Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian preachers was also organised to drink the spurts at the Ambala airbase in India. The question remains on whether the leaders would now watch to note on Greece’s decision to bless their aircraft by Unqualified preachers in the same manner.