Namo Seva turns a birthday into a government programme

A diya is ordinarily a private ritual. On September 17, 2026, it became an administrative activity.

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned 76, the BJP’s month-long Seva Sankalp Abhiyan began across BJP-ruled states, combining public-service programmes with an elaborate calendar of events marking his birthday and 25 years in public life. The programme runs until October 17 and includes lamp-lighting, school competitions, street theatre, beneficiary outreach, influencer visits, torch marches and a gathering of 1.25 lakh elected representatives.

The political party calls it a celebration of seva. The more consequential question is where the celebration is being staged — and who is being asked to participate.

In Delhi, at least 75 government schools were instructed to organise diya-lighting on their campuses for Modi’s birthday. Schools were provided diya-related material and asked to record the event and upload footage to a Google Drive. Teachers were also instructed to visit the homes of Class 10 toppers carrying diyas and blessings. The programme includes speech, drawing and reel-making competitions and runs through October 17, even as schools are in the middle of mid-term examinations.

That changes the character of the event.

And Bengal takes the same logic beyond the school gate. The state government has asked students from primary to higher-secondary levels to light an “Ashirbader Diya” at home with their families at 7 pm on September 17, with the School Education Department directing district school inspectors to prepare student lists for the exercise. The programme is part of Bengal’s Seva Sankalp Abhiyan, announced from Nabanna and scheduled from September 17 to October 10, with district administrations and MLAs involved in its implementation. The state has also lined up programmes marking Modi’s 25 years in public life, while 50,000 Annapurna scheme beneficiaries are being brought together in Kolkata for a birthday programme.

The irony is institutional rather than incidental: a birthday celebration centred on the head of the Union government is moving through the machinery of a state government, its schools, district administration and welfare networks. What begins as a party-led political ritual thus acquires the vocabulary — and infrastructure — of public administration.

A political party organising a birthday programme is ordinary political mobilisation. A government school becoming part of that mobilisation raises a different institutional question: where does political celebration end and public administration begin?

The wider programme makes that boundary still harder to locate.

According to reports, the BJP’s 14-module campaign involves government departments and public institutions in activities ranging from school competitions and Anganwadi programmes to beneficiary stories, service camps and cultural performances. In one module, beneficiaries of government schemes are expected to participate in the lighting of lamps. Another envisages music-based street theatre depicting Modi’s 25 years in public life across schools, colleges, panchayats and community centres.

The language is revealing. Welfare beneficiaries are not merely being presented as recipients of public schemes; they are being incorporated into a narrative about the political leader associated with those schemes.

That distinction matters because welfare is a function of the state, while electoral and political mobilisation belongs to parties. When the two occupy the same stage, the citizen can begin to appear less like a rights-bearing recipient of public policy and more like a participant in a political gratitude exercise.

The scale is equally significant.

In Delhi, the government has planned the lighting of 1.2 lakh lamps at Kartavya Path under the “Aashirwad Ka Diya” programme. In Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain, more than 25 lakh lamps are reportedly planned, with around 30,000 people expected to participate. Haryana has also announced lamp-lighting at a state-run university.

None of this makes every participant a political supporter, nor does participation itself establish coercion. But the institutional architecture is difficult to ignore: government schools, administrative departments, welfare beneficiaries, public spaces and state-linked institutions are being woven into a celebration centred on one political leader.

The deeper issue, therefore, is not the diya.

It is who is lighting it, where it is being lit, who organised it — and whether the machinery of public administration should be part of the answer.

A school is supposed to teach citizens how institutions work and how power can be questioned.

When that school is instructed to light a lamp for the person who heads the government, the question is no longer merely about a birthday.

It is about the boundary between the state and the politics of celebration.