LUCKNOW: After
Suresh Rana, another BJP minister
Rajendra Pratap Singh alias Moti Singh has courted controversy by saying that Dalits felt liberated because of visits by BJP leaders to their homes.
Singh, who is rural engineering minister, had gone to address a chaupal in
Gadhmau village in Badagaon block of Jhansi on Tuesday evening.
Soon after dining with a
Dalit family in the village, Singh was quoted as saying: “Ram aur Shabri ka samvaad Ramayana mein hai. Aaj jab
Gyan Ji (Dalit man whose house Singh visited) ki Maa ne mujhe roti parosi to unhone kaha ‘mera uddhar ho gaya’. Kisi Raja ke yahan bhojan kiya hota toh shayad unki Maa ne ye na kaha hota. (The Ram and Shabri dialogue finds a reference in the Ramayana. When she was serving me, Gyanji’s mother said, ‘I feel liberated’. Had it not been their house, I don’t think I would have got such a reaction).”
Singh’s statement drew flak from the Samajwadi Party which said BJP leaders have anti-Dalit mindset and want to make Dalits always feel backward.
“All this shows their ‘samantiwadi’ (feudal) mindset. They do not want the social balance as envisaged in the Constitution,” said SP spokesperson Sunil Singh.
Moti Singh, however, rubbished SP allegations and said that by visiting Dalit homes the BJP was trying to bring ‘Samajik Samrasta’ (social equality) among all classes.
“Lord Ram, too, did that when he visited the house of Shabri. Social equality is the essence of the Ramayana...People dining together are always equal,” the minister told TOI.
He said the Opposition was rattled by the BJP’s rural outreach programme that also took in its ambit socially backward and other oppressed classes.
“They are unnecessarily making an issue out of it,” he said.
Meanwhile, Suresh Rana, who found himself in a controversy for visiting a
Dalit house and eating food brought from outside, said that he had not ordered food from outside and ate whatever was served to him.
“The food was prepared in the village only,” he claimed.
Moti Singh