Disrespectful Statements Made By Indian Politicians

1. Mulayam Singh Yadav:

In April 2014, Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav said, “boys will be boys, they commit mistakes.” He was opposing the death penalty of three men who were found guilty in a gangrape case. He even blamed the girls for rape and said that girls get friendly with boys but when they fight and have differences, they mark it as rape.”

2. Surendra Singh:

After the Hathras gangrape horror case, Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Ballia MP Surendra Singh, said that sanskar (values) should be instilled in girls to prevent incidents of rape. He said, “Even if the government flaunts swords before the rapists, that won’t help in stopping such crimes unless parents teach their daughters to dress properly.”

3. Tarun Vinay:

In April 2017, Tarun Vinay, BJP’s former Rajya Sabha member and president of the India-Africa Parliamentary Friendship Group, called South Indians as blacks. Answering a question about the racism in an Al Jazeera show he said, “If we were racist, why would we have all the entire South (India) which you know Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra. Why do we live with them? We have black people all around us.”

4. Narendra Modi:

In June 2015, While delivering a lecture at Dhaka University in Bangladesh PM Narendra Modi congratulated Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina and said, “she has zero-tolerance towards terrorism,” “despite being a woman”. This sexist remark did not go well with many people and they slammed PM Modi.

5. Digvijaya Singh:

In 2013, Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh made a disrespectful remark towards Rahul Gandhi’s aide Meenakshi Natrajan as “sau tunch maal” (desirable object).

6. K J George:

In 2015, Karnataka’s minister K J George made an insensitive remark by saying that two men raping a woman cannot be termed as gang rape.

7. Mohan Bhagwat:

In 2013, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said, “Crimes against women happening in urban India are shameful. It is a dangerous trend. But such cases will not happen in “Bharat” or the rural areas of India. In villages and forests of the country and there will be no such incidents of gang-rape or sex crimes.”

8. Abu Azmi

Samajwadi Party’s Abu Azmi in 2014 draw flack from many people when he said, “If a woman is caught (in a rape case), then both she and the boy should be punished. In India, there is the death penalty for rape, but when there’s consensual sex outside marriage, there’s no death penalty against women.”