A remark made by Bihar’s education minister Chandrashekhar Prasad has drawn the ire of a mahant in Ayodhya who has offered an award of Rs 10 crore to anyone who can chop off the tongue of the former.
Prasad had attended a convocation ceremony on Wednesday in Patna and said that the Ramcharitmanas was a book that spread hatred in society. On Thursday evening, Sant Paramhans Acharya said, “The entire country has been offended by the minister’s remarks. This is an insult to all Sanatanis, to all Hindus.”
Prasad had picked up a couplet from the 16th-century composition by bhakti poet Tulsidas to illustrate his contention. A loose translation of the first line of the couplet is, “educated in the lower castes”.
Prasad’s take was that the line spreads hatred. However, the actual line, spoken by one Kakbhushandi who has been cursed to be a crow, is that an overhearing of the Ramayana from Lord Shiva’s mouth had made him like a snake which had been fed milk and thus dangerous. Such was Kakbhushandi’s knowledge that it was he who narrated the Ramayana to Garuda- the divine creature which is the mount of Lord Vishnu.
Prasad had lumped the Ramcharitmanas, the Manu Smriti and Madhav Sadashivrao Golwalkar’s Bunch of Thoughts in the category of books that divided the country by hate.
Paramhans Acharya has demanded strict action against the minister. “He should be removed from his post within a week and seek forgiveness”, he said.
No stranger to controversy himself, the mahant had recently remarked that he would skin Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan and burn him alive. This was in light of the protests against the saffron bikini donned by Deepika Padukone in the soon-to-be-released Pathaan, in which Khan plays the titular role.
