Morals Exist Only To Be Preached To Others

"Doosron ko naseehat, khud miyaan fazeehat" (“Preaching sermons to others, while making a spectacle of oneself)”

This classic Hindustani proverb mocks those who lecture everyone else on morality while making a mess of their own conduct. It is the ultimate reality check on "practicing what you preach", especially when a politician builds a brand around sacred traditions, yet treats his own sacred vows with breezy indifference.

Though it’s inappropriate to comment about one’s personal life, nowhere is this double standard more entertaining than in the political theater of Pawan Kalyan, Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister. In Indian politics, consistency is often considered a boring virtue, and nobody proves that better than him. Having announced his mutual separation from his third wife, Anna Lezhneva, after 13 years of marriage, the actor-politician has once again turned his personal life into the biggest blockbuster in town...

Of course, the script for this latest development was written back in 2023 on Nandamuri Balakrishna’s talk show, Unstoppable with NBK. Explaining his previous divorces from Nandini and Renu Desai, Kalyan offered a refreshingly breezy philosophy on matrimony: "It didn’t happen out of desire or infatuation, they just happened".

It is a fascinating defense. Most people "just happen" to forget their umbrella, miss a train, or accidentally order spicy biryani. Walking around a sacred fire three separate times, signing legal registries, and starting new families is usually seen as a deliberate choice. Yet, in the Power Star’s universe, marriages apparently descend upon him like sudden monsoon showers, unplanned, unavoidable, and strictly sequential, because, as he helpfully clarified, "I didn’t marry all the three at the same time". Truly, a benchmark in modern restraint.

What makes this casual "oops, it happened again" attitude truly theatrical is the political costume he currently wears. Over the years, Kalyan has switched ideological outfits faster than a hero changes jackets in a foreign-location song, flirting with Leftist revolution, embracing secularism, and now roaring from rooftops as an "unapologetic Sanatani" defender of ancient traditions and sacred values.

In traditional Sanatana Dharma, marriage (Vivaha) is touted as a lifelong, sacred Samskara, a solemn duty, not a trial subscription that auto-cancels when circumstances shift. While political supporters and commentators argue that legal separations are private matters involving due process and personal honesty, critics point out a glaring contradiction. When a leader who lectures the public on cultural purity and moral rectitude treats marital vows like accidental plot twists, the subtext becomes impossible to ignore.

Normally, a politician’s private life should remain behind closed doors. However, when a public figure actively markets himself as a moral compass for the youth, his actions inevitably become a syllabus. By brushing off three broken marriages as passive events that "just happened", the message sent to his millions of followers is remarkably convenient: if you are a man of stature, lifelong commitment is optional, accountability is someone else's problem, and sacred traditions are meant to be preached from a podium—not necessarily practiced at home.

After all, in politics as in cinema, why worry about continuity when you can always just announce a sequel?

In the end, the entire saga echoes Pawan Kalyan’s own famous punchline from Gabbar Singh: "Naaku konchem tikkundi, kaani daaniko lekkundi" (I have a bit of madness, too, but there’s a method to it).

Watching a self-proclaimed guardian of ancient traditions casually shrug off three broken marriages as accidental events while lecturing the public on morality proves that while the ideological costumes keep changing, there is always a convenient method to the madness.