Brahmins don’t take offence when caste called, why do ‘shudras’, says Pragya Thakur

#WATCH | Kshatriya ko kshatriya keh do, bura nahi lagta. Brahmin ko brahmin keh do, bura nahi laga. Vaishya ko vaishya keh do, bura nahi lagta. Shudra ko shudra keh do, bura lag jata hai. Kaaran kya hai? Kyunki samajh nahi paate: BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur in Sehore, MP (12.12) pic.twitter.com/CbCctxmACp

— ANI (@ANI) December 12, 2020

“Kshatriya ko kshatriya keh do, bura nahin lagta. Brahmin ko brahmin keh do, bura nahin lagta. Vaishya ko Vaishya keh do, bura nahin lagta. Shudra ko shudra keh do, bura lag jata hai. Kaaran kya hai? Kyunki na-samjhi, samajh nahi paate,” she said.

(“If you call a kshatriya a kshatriya, they don’t feel bad; call a brahmin a brahmin, they don’t feel bad; call a vaishya a vaishya, they don’t feel bad. But if you call a shudra a shudra, they feel bad. Why is this so? Because of ignorance, they are unable to understand.”)

In other contentious remarks, Thakur said that a “law to control population growth should be for those who indulge in anti-national activities…it doesn’t apply for those who live for the nation”.

She also said that “reservation should be on the basis of economic background to benefit the poor, enabling them to live a better life not on caste lines”. Addressing women at the gathering, she said: “Today’s kshatriya  need to understand their duties and produce more and more children to induct them into the Armed Forces so that they can fight for the nation and strengthen its security.”

On the ongoing farmers’ protests, she said: “Those who have been protesting in the name of farmers are anti-nationals. They are not farmers, but Congressmen and Leftists in the garb of farmers and raising their voices against the country and spreading misinformation, the way they did during the Shaheen Bagh protest (in Delhi against the CAA).”

On Sunday, Thakur was unavailable for comment but her office said she was invited to the event to commemorate the foundation day of Kshatriya Mahasabha. However, the national working president of Akhil Bharatiya Kshatriya Mahasabha, Surendra Singh Tomar, said the organisation was not behind the event.

“The establishment day will be commemorated on December 27 and a gathering will be held in Gwalior,” Tomar said, adding that the organisation has about 2.5 lakh members in Madhya Pradesh out of 17.5 lakh across the country.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, Mahasabha office-bearers said the event that Thakur attended was “organised by her own people”.

Thakur has had to apologise twice in the recent past for her controversial remarks. In the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, she apologised for her remarks on the death of former Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare, who was killed in the 26/11 attacks. Thakur was the first to be arrested in the Malegaon case on October 23, 2008, within a month of the blast after the ATS investigation led by Karkare.

In November 2019, she came under fire for her remarks praising Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse, which forced the BJP to remove her from the consultative committee on defence. She had to apologise twice in Lok Sabha after an angry Opposition rejected her first apology.