“Modi Kahin Nahin Jayenge” Becomes First Campaign Song to Reassure Singer
Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal posted a video of himself playing the harmonium and singing the line in a near-devotional style (Image video grab, Meghwal on X)
By AMIT KUMAR
Satire. Facts are real and reported; the commentary is not.
New Delhi, November 7, 2026 — Political scientists are calling it the first known case of a ruling party soothing itself in 4/4 time.
It began when Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, at a Patna event, answered an audience member’s remark that the prime minister “will not go anywhere.” His reply was “Modi ka baap bhi jayega.” It was the sort of line that wins applause in the room and loses the news cycle by evening.
The BJP, to its credit, wasted nothing. Within days, a song titled “Modi Kahin Nahin Jayenge” appeared, shared by union ministers and chief ministers. On November 3, Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal posted a video of himself playing the harmonium and singing the line in a near-devotional style. Manoj Tiwari, Parvesh Sahib Singh and Kapil Mishra have rendered the refrain too, and Haryana’s BJP has produced T-shirts. There is as yet no confirmed tally of the number of harmoniums deployed.
The ministry-of-music approach is not new. Tiwari, a singer-actor, once said a theme song “summarises the manifesto.” The party released “Phir Aayenge Modi” in December 2023 and a successor in January 2024. Governance, it seems, has a hook.
The psychology, such as it is
Repetition works. Hear a line often enough and it feels true, which is why jingles outlive arguments. Chanting also binds a group: a leader at a harmonium is less a speaker than a priest. There is, however, an awkward quirk of negation. A song that insists someone is not going anywhere forces everyone to picture the going. The old advice about not thinking of an elephant applies, and the elephant is currently on a stage with a harmonium.
The campaign also does what 2019’s “Main Bhi Chowkidar” did: it shifts attention from the economy, jobs and prices to the party’s most popular face. That is clever. It arrives, though, after summer youth protests over exam-paper leaks, which forced the government to amend a law. A chorus is a fine reply to a joke. Whether it answers a generation that was unimpressed by the old tunes is another question.
Is there a world parallel?
Several, none exact. Russia gave us “A Man Like Putin,” a 2002 pop hit by a Kremlin-linked group, and Argentina has a Peronist march sung for generations. In 2016, Donald Trump’s supporters turned Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” into merchandise, and Clinton’s own fans did the same with “nasty woman.” India’s own 2019 “chowkidar” slogan was a textbook case of turning an insult into a badge.
What is rarer is the tempo: a ruling party answering one sentence from an opposition leader with a full music-video rollout. Congress, for its part, supplied the lyric. Every satire needs a straight man, and a party president handing over the hook counts.
If the aim was to make Kharge’s remark the story, it has worked. If the aim was to answer the youth who protested this summer, the harmonium is, at best, an opening act.
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