On Friday, Mayawati yet again made casteist statements on PM Modi. She alleged that the Prime Minister isn’t an OBC by birth and that he hasn’t suffered from casteism. Mayawati said this in response PM Modi’s accusation of the ‘mahagathbandhan’ being casteist. She also said that Akhilesh Yadav, the son of a former chief minister and former union minister, is real backward, while Modi, who comes from humble origins, is not really backward.
Mayawati: PM’s accusation that ‘mahagathbandhan’ is casteist, is absurd. How can those who suffered from casteism be casteist? Entire country knows he isn’t an OBC by birth, he hasn’t suffered from the atrocities of casteism. So he shouldn’t say such lies about ‘mahagathbandhan’ pic.twitter.com/yjBxuUdAd9
— ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) May 10, 2019
“Modi ji is not an OBC since birth that is why he has not gone through the pain that they go through. He should have not given ‘jaativaad’ comment on our gathbandhan,” she said. She continued by asking, “If by chance Modi was OBC, then would RSS have let him become the PM?”
“The biggest mahamilavati is PM Modi himself as he has enlisted his upper caste in the backward list for political gains during the tenure of his own government. The person who is really backward is Akhilesh Yadav. He is not a fake and ‘on-paper’ backward like Narendra Modi,” Mayawati said in a SP-BSP joint rally in Azamgarh.
Earlier on April 27 also, Mayawati had attacked the PM saying that Modi had got his upper class included in the OBC list during his term as the Gujarat Chief Minister. “In order to derive political profits during elections, he (PM Modi) got his upper caste included in the list of backward castes. Like Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav, (PM) Modi was not born in a backward caste,” she said.
However, a closer look showed that Mayawati was saying an outright lie. Narendra Modi belongs to the Modh Ghanchi caste which was classified as OBC by the Gujarat government in 1994, after the Mandal Commission report. Narendra Modi became the Gujarat CM only in 2001.
Questions over PM Modi’s caste have been raised before. In 2014 Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil had alleged that Narendra Modi is a “fake OBC”, making the same claim as Mayawati saying that Modi’s caste wasn’t listed as OBC before he became the CM. Following which the Gujarat government had to issue a clarification stating the Modh Ghachi caste was listed as OBC in 1994.
