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Modi’s council of ministers: Return of the Aryavrat

By Faraz Ahmad,

There are nine Brahmins in the cabinet of our so-called Neeechee jati born chaiwala’s son Narendra Modi, the 15th Prime Minister of India and all these important members of the BJP/RSS parivar, starting from Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Nitin Gadkari, Ananth Kumar and Kalraj Mishra, all five members of the Union cabinet are the top brass of the BJP. Of the 24 cabinet ministers, 16 are upper caste and even if we exclude M Venkaiah Naidu and D V Sadanand Gowda belonging to rura land owning castes of Southern India, the other 14 are pedigreed Aryavrat. So much for Modi flaunting his OBC origins.

There are another two Brahmin ministers of state including Prakash Javadekar and Nirmala Sitharaman. This wouldn’t raise an eye brow in the normal course but for Modi and his party shouting from the rooftops of his backward Teli-Ghanchi caste to fool the OBCs and even Dalits. Modi has four tribals Jual Oram a token representative of the scheduled tribes, typically to handle tribal affairs, a portfolio he briefly held in Atal Bihari Vajpayee led NDA government too. In addition there is Sarbanand Sonowal, a difficult and prized catch from Assam and Sudarshan Bhagat from Lohardaga in Jharkhand.Vishnu Dev Sai too became a compulsion since tribals of Chhatisgarh have been consistently voting the BJP since 2009. There are three scheduled caste members in the Modi cabinet, or let us say just two from the BJP, Thawarachand Gehlot, the second Nihal Chand was literally last minute addition when it dawned on Modi that Rajasthan which gave the BJP all 25 seats got not a single representative in his council of ministers. The other one Ram Vilas Paswan heads the Lok Jana Shakti Party (LJP).


At a Swearing-in Ceremony, at Rashtrapati   Bhavan, in New Delhi on May 26, 2014. (Courtesy: PIB)
President, Pranab Mukherjee and the Vice President, Mohd. Hamid Ansari with the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and the other members of Council of Ministers after the Swearing-in Ceremony, at Rashtrapati Bhavan, in New Delhi on May 26, 2014.

That’s not the end of the story. There are in addition seven thakurs/Rajputs, led by number two in Modi cabinet Rajnath Singh himself. Then you have others, like Narendra Singh Tomar, Radha Mohan Singh, Ashok Gajapati Raju, Jitendra Singh. In addition there is one Bhoomihar Manoj Sinha also in the council of minsters.

The Aryavrats include Harsh Wardhan (Goel), Piyush Goyal, Maneka Gandhi, Harsimrat Kaur Majithiya/Badal, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Smriti Irani.

If we include Modi himself OBCs have no reasons to complain though not a single Yadav among the OBCs nor a Jatav among Dalits finds any place in this RSS composition of the OBC ministry. So we have Modi himself, Uma Bharti, Rao Inderjeet Singh, Santosh Gangwar, Gopinath Munde, Anant Geete, Upendra Kushwaha and Kirshan Pal Gujjar and most important the main communal instigator of Muzaffarnagar carnage of Muslims Sanjeev Baliyan. Oh yes we also have a Muslim, Apa Najma Heptullah, wan and a little out of sync, pulled out from the woodwork to head the Minority Affairs. Significantly the old favourties Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Syed Shahnawaz Husain were both put in deep freeze. But if age was a criterion to keep out old men like L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, it obviously did not apply to old and doddering women.

Contrast this with the UPA government of Manmohan Singh/Sonia Gandhi. Except for Pranab Mukherjee and till he fell ill Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, no Brahmin enjoyed any position of importance in that government and as for Pranab we have it on the authority of none other than noted CPI leader A B Bardhan that she blocked Pranab’s path to the Rashtrapati Bhawan in 2007 and in 2013 Pranab succeeded in reaching the Presidential palace in spite of and not because of Sonia Gandhi, though Manmohan had been wanting to kick up Pranab ever since he became the Prime Minister.

Sonia’s Prime Minister was a Sikh.Oh yes Modi had two Sikhs, one of course from NDA partner Akali Dal Harsimrat Kaur Badal and the other Maneka Gandhi. For all the insults they may heap on Nehru-Gandhi family these Sanghis have such a complex that Maneka has been taken only to flaunt “Look we too have a Gandhi, never mind if she was dropped once by Atal Bihari Vajpayee for being controversial and doing precious little work. So much for Modi’s supposed priority to pick an efficient and competent team. On the other hand poor S S Ahluwalia yet again missed the bus.

Returning to Sonia, she chose a Sikh as the Prime Minister. She gave the best ever Home Minister to India P Chidamabaram. It is another thing that half way through Chiddu abandoned the post cant say for fear of Sanghis out to teach him a lesson for taking them on or just for lure of money. Then she settled for a SC Home Minister. She had a SC woman Speaker and earlier a CPM leader adorned the chair. There were a couple of Brahmins in Singh’s cabinet but none got any primacy. Perhaps that is why another Brahmin Sanjaya Baru hated Sonia with a passion. But so did the rest of the Aryavrat. Sadly those who were promoted by her failed to see what progressive steps Sonia initiated and fell for the conspiracy to condemn her and her son as corrupt Italians. Well as Ashok Singhal said we now have the Hindutva back ruling us after Prthiviraj Chauhan and Singhal knows it better than you and me that Prithviraj Chauhan was no OBC.

By the way the media showed its bias once more—its desire to bend backwards to please Hindu Hriday Samrat Narendrabhai, Damodardas Modi—by claiming that women representation in Modi’s council of ministers has gone up to 25 per cent. That’s also patently wrong and dishonest hype. There are seven women starting with Sushma Swaraj, Uma Bharti, Maneka Gandhi, Harsimrat Kaur Smriti Irani, Najma Heptullah and Nirmala Sitharaman of the 45 members sworn in yesterday. That works out to 15.55 per cent and not 25 per cent dear Arnab Goswami. Are you challenging me?