Events & Personalities
Parsis illegitimate?
Those priests and others who consider the children of intermarried couples illegitimate received a taste of their own medicine when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) union minister of state, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti commented at an electoral rally in Delhi on November 30, 2014: "Voters must choose between ramzaade (those born of Ram) and haraamzade (illegitimately born).” Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought to mollify the outburst that followed by attributing her utterances to her rural origins, her caste, her economic impoverishment and her gender.
In her column "By Invite” in The Economic Times dated December 9, 2014 writer Arati R. Jerath quotes Modi telling Parliament that "she is a new minister, we know her social background, she is from a village.” Addressing the TV camera outside Parliament his parliamentary affairs minister Venkaiah Naidu was more direct: "We should appreciate (she is) a first timer, a lady, coming from a garib parivar (poor family)… I don’t want to go into her social background…”
"The BJP’s line of defense concealed telling facts,” observes Jerath. "It turns out the Sadhvi was not the first to use the ‘ramzaade versus haraamzade’ formulation. Nor, it seems, was the Delhi rally her first sin. The phrase was coined in the aftermath of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots as a cunning invocation of Hindutva imagery. It was used repeatedly by BJP leaders across UP (Uttar Pradesh), including the Sadhvi herself.
"BJP leader Ram Pratap Chauhan was one such offender. A YouTube video shows him spewing the same vitriolic words at the Vijay Shankhnaad rally in Agra on November 21, 2013. This was the rally at which Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana, both of whom face charges for the Muzaffarnagar riots, were garlanded as heroes.
"Media reports reveal that the Sadhvi used the formulation a few months later at another Vijay Shankhnaad rally. This one was in Lucknow on March 2, 2014. As it happens, Modi was present at both meetings but chose to remain silent. Interestingly, the phrase surfaced again, this time in a speech at an election rally in Bareilly on May 1, 2014. Modi wasn’t there but (home minister) Rajnath Singh was. He too remained mum.
"What the Sadhvi said in Delhi on November 30 then was no slip of her village tongue. She was merely following a script which seems to have been crafted with deliberate care by a clever saffron propagandist,” reminds Jerath.
The columnist, while noting that Sadhvi belongs to the Nishad caste, one of the most backward in UP and Bihar, adds "by attributing her fulminations to her caste and her rural upbringing, the BJP has demeaned an important social group that voted with both hands and feet for the party in the Lok Sabha polls.”
"The BJP’s line of defense concealed telling facts,” observes Jerath. "It turns out the Sadhvi was not the first to use the ‘ramzaade versus haraamzade’ formulation. Nor, it seems, was the Delhi rally her first sin. The phrase was coined in the aftermath of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots as a cunning invocation of Hindutva imagery. It was used repeatedly by BJP leaders across UP (Uttar Pradesh), including the Sadhvi herself.
"BJP leader Ram Pratap Chauhan was one such offender. A YouTube video shows him spewing the same vitriolic words at the Vijay Shankhnaad rally in Agra on November 21, 2013. This was the rally at which Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana, both of whom face charges for the Muzaffarnagar riots, were garlanded as heroes.
"Media reports reveal that the Sadhvi used the formulation a few months later at another Vijay Shankhnaad rally. This one was in Lucknow on March 2, 2014. As it happens, Modi was present at both meetings but chose to remain silent. Interestingly, the phrase surfaced again, this time in a speech at an election rally in Bareilly on May 1, 2014. Modi wasn’t there but (home minister) Rajnath Singh was. He too remained mum.
"What the Sadhvi said in Delhi on November 30 then was no slip of her village tongue. She was merely following a script which seems to have been crafted with deliberate care by a clever saffron propagandist,” reminds Jerath.
The columnist, while noting that Sadhvi belongs to the Nishad caste, one of the most backward in UP and Bihar, adds "by attributing her fulminations to her caste and her rural upbringing, the BJP has demeaned an important social group that voted with both hands and feet for the party in the Lok Sabha polls.”
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