Campaign stocked with beastly words reaches new low

‘GADHA (DONKEY), ‘BHAINS’ (BUFFALO)’, ‘KABOOTAR (PIGEON)’, ‘MAGARMACH’ (CROCODILE), ‘MACHLI’ (FISH), ‘SHER’ (LION) HAVE ALL FIGURED IN POLL SPEECHES

The political war of words that started months ago is turning murkier every day. It’s almost as if politicians have created an ‘animal farm’ with their reference to various creatures to score a point over their rivals in the ongoing Uttar Pradesh assembly poll campaign.

‘Gadha (donkey), ‘bhains’ (buffalo)’, ‘kabootar (pigeon)’, ‘magarmach (crocodile)’, ‘machli (fish)’, ‘sher (lion)’, ‘haathi (elephant)’ or ‘chooha (rat)’ have all figured in poll speeches, press conferences and political counter-attacks.

Moreover, social media has spiced up the goings-on with people sharing reactions and jokes on those animals.

Take the case of ‘gadha’ (donkey). The animal warfare began when the UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav asked a Bollywood superstar to stop publicising “Gujarat ke gadhey (the donkeys of Gujarat)”. The very next day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tried to checkmate Akhilesh by saying that he “works like a donkey and serves his masters — 125 crore citizens of the country.”

Akhilesh’s donkey comment had evoked a reaction from the Gujarat tourism department as the advertisement was put up by them.

If this was not enough, ’bhains’ (buffalo) too made its presence felt in the political war of words.

A few years ago, senior UP minister Azam Khan reported that some of his buffaloes were lost following which the UP police went in a tizzy to trace them.

When the prime minister in his speech referred to Khan’s buffaloes, the minister retorted he would offer Modi milk to drink from his buffaloes.

When BJP national president Amit Shah coined ‘KASAB’, saying ‘Ka’ stood for ‘Congress’, ‘Sa’ for ‘Samajwadi Party’ and ‘B’ for BSP, Akhilesh and his wife Dimple, the Kannauj MP, said they had studied in school that ‘ka’ stood for ‘kabootar’ but this was not an instance of ‘kabootar udan’ (to convey that the BJP was building castles in the air for public)”. For them, pigeon is a symbol of peace. Though Akhilesh has stopped making reference to ‘gadha’ since the PM reacted, he and Dimple are continuing to refer to ‘kabootar’ in almost all their rallies.

After the Akhilesh-Modi war of words, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi made his foray with a roar of ‘sher’ (lion) remark. Lion is the symbol of Modi’s ‘Make in India’ programme. Rahul said this lion was feebler than a ‘chooha’ (rat).

Magarmach and machli (crocodile and fish) also entered the political lexicon in the state. UP minister Raghuraj Pratap Singh aka Raja Bhaiyya, an independent MLA from Kunda, has often been in the eye of the storm over rumours that there was once a crocodile (magarmarch) at a pond owned by his family in his native Pratapgarh district. He, however, refuted all the claims and said it only had fish.

And the ‘haathi (elephant) remains an old favourite of Akhilesh. There is no rally where he does not mention that BSP government’s elephants were motionless for the past 10 years.

Now, in the final leg of the campaign, the BJP national president invoked ‘gaai’ (cow) and ‘baiel’ (ox).