Uttar Pradesh is hardly a cultural backwater but Union coal minister Sriprakash Jaiswal, a native of that state, has given us extraordinary evidence of boorishness, indeed of being cut off from the sensibility of our age.
Speaking at a kavi sammelan in Kanpur on Sunday, he stunned the audience with his admission that his wife no longer held any charm for him as she had “ceased to be new”. When women’s organisations erupted in fury, he said he was quoted out of context. And the context? That it was a gathering of poets, and he had taken the liberty to speak in a “light-hearted” way.
There might be a place for everyone under the sun, but is there one for a cultural misanthrope in the Union Cabinet, the top policy-making body in a nation trying to shed its feudalistic baggage — most unequivocally regarding gender — and rapidly embrace modernity, equality, knowledge. If this is the objective, the council of ministers can’t be a refuge for misfits.
It is not political correctness or unattainable virtues that we expect in politicians. But a thoroughly unenlightened man with degrading views about one-half of the population can’t be trusted with public policy. Mr Jaiswal’s continuance in high public office is an affront to our people, and he deserves to be asked to go. Political parties too must not give such elements election tickets.