At a time when the BJP is striving hard to make inroads into the dalit communities across the country, two senior leaders of the party made totally contradictory statements on a single day, apparently exposing its confusion over the dalit outreach.
While Union minister Uma Bharti compared feeding dalits to a self-purification activity, Rajendra Pratap, a senior minister in Uttar Pradesh, made a casteist comment comparing BJP leaders visiting dalit houses to Lord Ram blessing Shabari (a dalit) in the Ramayana.
Pratap said the way Lord Ram blessed Shabari by eating the berries, BJP leaders were also blessing dalits by dining with them. His statement came days after Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had dinner and spent a night at a dalit village in Pratapgarh district on April 24.
Uma Bharti, in stark contrast to Pratap's statement, said her house gets blessed when she serves dalits with her hands in her house.
"I am not Lord Ram who will be able to purify the Dalits by dining with them. When Dalits come to our house and eat together it is then that we will become pure," Bharti said while addressing a rally at Madhya Pradesh's Chhatarpur district.