To his PU student brigade, Laloo is a deity

PATNA: Friday was the day of deification of RJD supremo Laloo Prasad Yadav. It had ingredients of subservience and humour, and was a pointer to new mindswing taking place in the students'' wing of RJD, the Chhatra RJD, or its adherents.
On the auspicious Guru Purnima Day, when devotees arrange havan (ceremonial fire) and chant mantras to honour their gurus (family and individual deities), top office-bearers of the Chhatra RJD organised Guru Purnima Utsav to honour Laloo on the Law College campus of Patna University, close to the bank of the Ganga.
He had been associated with the college as students'' leader in the early 1970s.
The organisers had arranged a vedi (altar) and used cowdung cakes for havan in front of a life-size photograph of Laloo. The air had fragrance of incense sticks, but nothing more to resemble a religious ceremony.
Beside the vedi, the organisers jointly chanted mantras like Om guru devaya namah, Om Laloo devaya namah, and Om guruwaya namah soberly.
They did it even before the camera of a private TV channel, but one of them, Mithilesh Yadav, from commerce faculty of PU, chipped in like an alien with his Om Laloo swaha. The organisers appealed to the photographer to erase the atheistic mantra in Laloodom.
Asked why Laloo, a human being, was being transformed into a deity, president of the organisation Hira Lal Pal said, "He has given us everything we had asked for — honour, economic upliftment and social dignity."
The participants included students from history and science faculties, even non-Yadavas.