Dear Reader,

Can we call it the animal spirits of politics surfacing most vividly during elections, or is it a deeper hostility toward animals, as political leaders routinely drag them into verbal slugfests? Or is the path of politics simply too serpentine?

For years, BSP chief and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati famously used animal imagery to describe her political rivals. She likened the Congress and the BJP to Saanpnath (lord of snakes) and Naagnath (king of cobras), ruling out alliances with both. This, despite the BSP having entered a pre-poll alliance with the Samajwadi Party in 1993, with the BJP in 1995, and with the Congress in 1996.

This election season, the snake made another appearance, this time in Assam.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, addressing an election rally in Nilambazar in the Sribhumi district, described the BJP and the RSS as jehreele saanp (venomous snakes). Citing the Quran, Kharge said that if a poisonous snake crosses someone’s path during Namaz, the prayer should be stopped and the snake killed. “The RSS and the BJP are that poisonous snake,” he reportedly said. “If you do not kill them, you will not survive.”

The reaction was swift. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma called Kharge pagal (madman), saying he was “speaking like a madman” due to old age. The RSS responded by filing police complaints against Kharge at police stations in Dispur and Silchar. The BJP lodged a formal complaint with the Election Commission, accusing the Congress president of inciting communal hatred and violating the model code of conduct.

The venom of communal rhetoric that has seeped into the body politic of Assam and elsewhere is a larger, more troubling issue. But this episode brought back memories of an evocative poem by the noted Hindi poet Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan, better known as Agyeya.

Addressing a snake, he writes: Saanp, tum sabhya to huye nahin / Nagar mein basna bhi tumhe nahin aaya / Ek baat poochhoon (uttar doge?) / Tab kaise seekha dansna, vish kahan paaya (O snake, you did not become civilised / You did not learn to live in cities / May I ask a question—will you answer? / Then how did you learn to bite, and where did you get the venom?)

Beyond poetry, cinema too has long been fascinated with snakes. And politicians from the film world seem happy to carry that imagery into public life.

At Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally at Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata in March 2021, soon after joining the BJP, actor Mithun Chakraborty thundered: Aami joldhorao noi, bele borao noi… aami ekta jaat cobra, ek chhobol-ei chhobi (Do not mistake me for a harmless snake. I am a pure cobra—one strike and you become a photograph).

More recently, actor Vineet Kumar portrayed the cunning politician Gauri Shankar Pandey in the web series Maharani (SonyLIV), a character repeatedly referred to as Kala Naag (black cobra). The character confesses that while he may not be capable of doing anything constructive, he is certainly capable of destroying others.

Hindi cinema offers no shortage of such imagery. In Elaan-e-Jung (1989), Sadashiv Amrapurkar’s iconic dialogue endures: “Naag hoon main, kala naag. Saamne aa jaye to apne baap ko bhi das loon, phir yeh desh kya cheez hai” (I am a cobra, a black cobra. I can bite even my father if he stands in my way. What then is the country?)

And who can forget Amrish Puri in Na-Insaafi (1989), when his character warns the police commissioner who arrested him that the day this kala naag escapes the prison bars, no one will be spared?

Political rhetoric has matched cinematic excess. In 2018, then BJP president Amit Shah described opposition parties as snakes, mongooses, cats, and dogs, all climbing a banyan tree to escape the “Modi flood.”

The imagery is striking, considering that snakes, especially cobras, occupy a revered place in Hindu mythology. Generations grew up hearing stories of Naag Loka, of Vishnu resting on the thousand-hooded Anant Shesha in the cosmic ocean, or of the child Krishna subduing the venomous serpent Kaliya, who had poisoned the waters of the Yamuna. A Kaliyadaman ghaat in Vrindavan marks the spot where Krishna is believed to have danced on the serpent’s heads. There is also the story of Takshak, the serpent who bit King Parikshit to death—a punishment, as legend has it, for the king having placed a dead snake around the neck of a meditating sage. Takshak is considered the younger brother of Vasuki, the king cobra that adorns the neck of Shiva.

Nag Panchami is still celebrated across many villages in the Hindi belt. I recall the jaw-dropping stories of the feats of cobras during the festival. That was long before I got exposed to Bollywood experimenting with box office success with snake themes in films like Nagin (two films with the same name), Nagina, and, much later, Hisss. The snakes in Hindi cinema quickly assumed human form, unlike English-language films like Anaconda, Python, King Cobra, and Snake Island, which allowed snakes to remain terrifyingly serpentine.

Back in the world of politics, the imagery continues. In August 2024, Bihar JDU MLA Gopal Mandal called his own party colleagues, Bhagalpur MP Ajay Mandal, kaala naag (black cobra), crudely referring to his skin colour, and Bulo Mandal as gora naag. “Dono naag hain—ek gora naag, ek kaala naag. Un naagon se bachiyega” (Both of them are snakes. Be careful of them), he warned.

That episode recalled Rajendra Kumar’s double role in the 1972 film Gora Aur Kala. Rajendra Kumar, popularly known as Jubilee Kumar, played separated twin brothers distinguished by their skin colour. Whether the MLA had the film in mind or not, using snake imagery alongside colour distinctions was a step too far, raising uncomfortable questions of colour prejudice that Hindi cinema itself often perpetuated.

Mythologies will remain mythologies, and films will remain films. But snakes have increasingly slithered into the political imagination.

Is politics truly a snake pit, or do politicians, after snaking their way to success, simply find comfort in the metaphor?

Tell us what you think.

Until the next newsletter.

Anand Mishra, Political Editor, Frontline

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