New Delhi: Reacting to Union minister Giriraj Singh’s racist comment on Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the latter said that she would not like to comment on people who have a ‘narrow mindset’.
Gandhi said this while briefly talking to reports at a village in Madhya Pradesh, where she met farmers who have been hit by unseasonal rainfall.
On Wednesday, Singh was shown on TV channels asking whether the Congress would have accepted a Nigerian woman (as its president) had Rajiv Gandhi married one. “If Rajiv had married a Nigerian woman, would the Congress have accepted her? If Sonia had not been white, would the party have accepted her?” he asked.
His comments not merely set off a huge row, with not just the Congress but several other parties as well as social activists on a warpath. The Nigerian high commission also stepped in to object to such a racist attack.
The BJP and the Narendra Modi government was once again pushed into a corner with the comment.
Though red-faced and trying desperately to distance itself from the remark, the party leadership does not appear to be in any mood to take action against the minister, who has turned into a “serial offender”. BJP president Amit Shah, however, summoned Mr Singh to warn that he should “exercise restraint and not embarrass the party”.
Besides Mr Singh, only on Tuesday, Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar had told protesting nurses in the state not to hold a ‘hunger strike in the sun … because it will make them dark and ruin their marital prospects”.
Nigeria’s acting high commissioner O.B. Okongor told reporters that a complaint might be filed with the external affairs ministry as Mr Singh’s comments were in “very bad taste” and wanted the minister to “withdraw the comments.
