Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is set to visit Tamil Nadu on January 14, and watch a jallikattu event in Avaniapuram near Madurai. The Wayanad MP’s visit comes ahead of the Tamil Nadu assembly polls due in April-May this year.
His visit however is being lashed out by critics as the Congress party was instrumental in bringing the ban on the sport that is seen as a symbol of Tamil culture and heritage.
The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) showed great interest in banning Jallikattu, the traditional heroic game of the Tamils while they were in power, and took all necessary steps to achieve it.
In fact, on December 15, 2015, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wrote a letter to the Human Society International, an organization similar to PETA, voicing his strong opposition to Jallikattu. Not only did he say that this most ‘horrible’ form of entertainment be not promoted, but he also wished the organization success in their goal of banning it.
Many United Progressive Alliance ministers, including Jairam Ramesh, had taken a similar stance. But when the protests for Jallikattu erupted in Tamil Nadu in January 2017, some, including Congress spokesperson Rajdeep Surjewala, began to change their tone and change their stance, saying that the government should take care to hold Jallikattu events with proper security arrangements.
On the other hand, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, another spokesperson of the Congress, appeared as an advocate for the petitioners seeking a ban on Jallikattu, and openly stated that Jallikattu was a ‘horrible’ sport.
In January 2017, when the pro-Jallikattu protests was taking the state by storm, National Herald, the mouthpiece of the Congress, published an article criticizing the protests in a slanderous manner saying that Tamil men used the protests to ‘assert their manhood’ after feeling emasculated under the iron-fist rule of later former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa.
The article titled “The Jallikattu issue and Tamil insecurity” and published on 20th January 2017 stated “In the past 10 years or so, the Tamil male may have especially felt the need to assert his manhood. Under the iron-fisted rule of J Jayalalithaa, male ministers of the state government have become invisible and literally prone, always prostrating themselves at her feet.”
It went on to add “This symbolic emasculation of men gladdened the hearts of women, who flocked to Jayalalithaa’s meetings and worshipped her as Shakti, the all-powerful, in the benevolent avatar as ‘Amma’.” taking a dig at the late AIADMK supremo.
The article also went on to take an apologist stance on PETA saying that it was a ‘symbolic’ suppression by PETA, represented in the minds of people by morphed images of Pamela Anderson and PETA’s India head, smoking a cigar and holding a glass of liquor, created in order to portray them as threats to ‘perceived’ Tamil tradition.
What the article did was trivialize and demean the youth-led pro-Jallikattu protests by calling Tamil men as people enslaved by Jayalalithaa who used the Jallikattu struggle in a way to assert their masculinity.
This article has been pointed out by netizens who are now lashing out at Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Madurai to witness Jallikattu.
The stance of many of the Congress leaders on Jallikattu has been quite the contrary of what the party is claiming now.
Former PM Manmohan Singh, in a letter to NG Jayasimha, Managing Director of Humane Society International, a Secunderabad-based NGO, had said that he was for banning the bull fight.
Former Union Minister of Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh had welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to ban Jallikattu. In fact, it was during his stint as the Environment Minister that he banned Jallikattu by adding bull to the list of animals prohibited for ‘performance’.
Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram Shashi Tharoor back in 2015 called Jallikattu as cruel.
Former Congress Minister Jayanthi Natarajan too speaking to a Tamil TV channel conceded that Congress was responsible for Jallikattu ban.
This has now triggered the hashtag #GoBackRahul with Congress critics calling out the party’s flip-flopping stance on Jallikattu.
