Uttar Pradesh: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has hit new lows this election season with the kind of language he employed to target his political rivals. His disparaging remarks and below-the-belt comments have been shorn of civility, which does not behove the stature of a chief minister.
Sample these utterances: “garmi nikaal denge” (loosely translated as ‘will snuff out the heat’, which is considered as a warning), “tamanchawadi” (pistol-loving), and “do ladke…dangaai” (loosely translated as ‘two men.. rioters’, which was an oblique reference to Akhilesh Yadav and Jayant Chaudhary).
Earlier, Adityanath put out a tweet mockingly referring to his Delhi counterpart by saying “suno Kejriwal”. Of course, Kejriwal paid Aditynath in the same coin by tweeting back, “suno Yogi”.
The verbal spat between the two chief ministers over Twitter started after Kejriwal criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech delivered in parliament on Monday and described it as “sarasar jhooth (white lies)”. To this, Adityanath responded by saying “suno Kejriwal” and described the latter as “manavdrohi (enemy of humans)”.
Kejriwal hit back by tweeting, “Suno Yogi! At least you should keep mum, the world saw corpses floating in the rivers in UP during the second wave of COVID-19.”
There is a general perception among voters that Adityanath has plumbed new depths with his language. In contrast, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has shown reasonable civility and has not lost his cool when reacting to abusive comments aimed at him.
“He (Adityanath) and many BJP leaders have been saying that they would target the mosque at Mathura after Ayodhya. But we don’t mind. We live in peace with our Hindu brothers here. Hindu-Muslim bahot hogaya (there has been too much of the Hindu-Muslim),” said Harun Khan from Nibri village, which falls under the Iglas assembly constituency.
Ranvir Singh, a Jatav from the neighbouring Ibramimpur village, said, “Unka tarika hi asabhya hai lekin humlogon par fark nahin padta. Unke khilaf shanti se vote karna hai (Adityanath is uncivilised. But, it will not make any difference to us. We will have to peacefully vote against him).”
When asked if Adityanath’s speeches make any difference on the ground, “No,” said Nishant, a local journalist while speaking from the sidelines of the Janadhikar Party’s rally held at the Gangiri Chouraha under the Chharra assembly constituency of Aligarh district on Monday, February 7. The Janadhikar Party is fighting upcoming polls in alliance with AIMIM.
“The voters are least bothered about what Yogi (Adityanath) is saying. They simply don’t talk about him,” added Nishant. “Locally, the contest is between Samajwadi Party’s nominee Laxmi Dhangar and the Bahujan Samaj Party’s Tilaknath Yadav. The sitting MLA and BJP candidate Ravindra Pal Singh is out of the race.”
If any comparison were to be drawn with Adityanath, Akhilesh Yadav and Jayant Chaudhary (of the Rashtriya Lok Dal) have cut a more graceful picture this election season, refraining from needless controversies over distasteful comments.
Asked about Adityanath’s ‘tamachawadi (pistol-loving)’ remark, Akhilesh smilingly said, “He (Adityanath) is the first chief minister in India’s history who got criminal cases withdrawn against him. The cases are testimony to his integrity in public life.”
Not just refraining from using slang in his public appearances, Akhilesh Yadav has come across as someone who treats elders with respect. He bowed down in respect when he received West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday, February 8.
Similarly, Jayant Chaudhary has maintained decorum in public appearances. Reacting to the “garmi nikaal denge” barb of Adityanath at an election rally, Chaudhary said, “People should vote to remove the charbi (flab) of the BJP leaders.”
The RSS-BJP cadres and trolls get incensed at any slightest criticism of Narendra Modi. But the fact remains that it was Modi who began using provocative slang against his rivals.
His words “Didi-o-Didi” in reference to Mamata Banerjee stunned civil society of Bengal in particular and India in general during the 2021 elections in the eastern state. People were at loss to understand how the rime minister could speak in such a way when referring to a woman chief minister.
In the 2015 assembly elections in Bihar, Narendra Modi questioned the “DNA” of Nitish Kumar — his then rival who was contesting in alliance with Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress. Nitish took it seriously by sending samples of hair strands of crores of Biharis to the Prime Minister’s Office. The Wire
