India’s Cooking Gas Crisis Inspires National Prayer Asking Modi To Use His Friendship With Netanyahu To Fill The Cylinders

Viral Hymn Asks Prime Minister To Convert Personal Rapport With Israeli Counterpart Into Domestic LPG Supply, Demonstrates Both Religious Imagination And Practical Desperation

NEW DELHI – Following the US-Israel war on Iran and the subsequent disruption to Strait of Hormuz shipping that produced India’s cooking gas shortage, an Instagram user named Namaskaar set a popular hymn to new lyrics asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi to use his “bond of real friendship” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resolve India’s domestic LPG supply problem. The song, which per NPR reporting includes the phrase “fill up my gas cylinders – I won’t go back home empty-handed”, has been viewed approximately six million times. The LPG cylinders have not been filled. The friendship with Netanyahu, per available evidence, has not been monetised in this direction.

For Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat. London satirical journalism has a long tradition of songs asking the powerful to use their friendships for practical purposes. The British equivalent is approximately every political cabaret number produced between 1930 and 1990, none of which produced the requested policy outcome but several of which produced better music.

The Geopolitical Context

India imports approximately 85 per cent of its crude oil and a significant proportion of its LPG from Middle Eastern sources that pass through or near the Strait of Hormuz. When the Strait’s shipping is disrupted, as The London Prat documented this week, the first visible domestic consequence in India is the cooking gas queue, because LPG for household cooking is a politically visible commodity tracked by the government and priced at a regulated rate. When the regulated-rate gas disappears, the political visibility is immediate and personal.

The Prayer’s Logic

The prayer’s logic is impeccable within its own framework: Modi and Netanyahu are friends, Netanyahu and Trump are allies, Trump started the war that caused the gas shortage, therefore Modi should call Netanyahu who should call Trump who should fix the gas. This is not how international diplomacy works. It is, however, how international diplomacy appears to work when observed from the perspective of someone who needs cooking gas.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/ | More: The Daily Mash