Over the last several years, many questions have been raised about Ravish Kumar’s obvious Hinduphobia, and his overt support of all other faiths. Now it appears that Ravish Kumar had himself answered the questions about his own Hindu identity, 8 years ago.
Ravish Kumar is no longer active on Twitter — his last tweet was sent out on 22nd August 2015 — but there was a time when he was an prolific user of the micro-blogging platform. Before 2015, Ravish Kumar not only used Twitter to air his thoughts and opinions, but also engaged with people. On 29th July 2012, a user named @cpankaj55 had asked Ravish Kumar a question. “Sir aap congreesi ho kya bjp agar sangma ko support na kare to congress k leader ko thoda hi karegi. aap to hindu hi ho naa. (Sir are you a Congressman? If the BJP doesn’t support (former Lok Sabha speaker) PA Sangma, will it support the Congress leader? Are you really a Hindu?).”
The question appeared to be about former Lok Sabha Speaker PA Sangma. In June 2012, the BJP had officially supported PA Sangma as a candidate for the post of President of India. The BJP had said they didn’t want to give a walkover to Congress because there was no prior consultation by UPA with BJP. As things turned out, BJP’s support for PA Sangma hadn’t counted for much, because in 2012 Congress’ Pranab Mukherjee had become India’s President.
But what was more surprising was Ravish Kumar’s response to the user who’d asked him if he was a Hindu. Incredibly, Ravish Kumar had responded with “Ghantaa Hindu hu (B*lls I’m a Hindu).”
Not only had Ravish Kumar categorically denied being a Hindu, but had also used an expletive while condescendingly rejecting the Hindu moniker.
Ravish Kumar’s tweet was immediately picked up by netizens, and spawned a variety of reactions. “Finally he accepted,” wrote a Twitter user, hinting that Ravish’s reporting had implied as much all along.
Others felt that the “admission” explained a lot of things.
Yet others felt that this was one of the few times Ravish had been honest.
Now India is a free country, and one is free to profess any religion and faith as one finds fit. But it’s somewhat surprising that Ravish Kumar, who normally preaches secularism and tolerance towards all religions, was so antagonistic towards being simply asked if he was a Hindu. Not only did Ravish Kumar categorically reject being a Hindu, he used a phallic slur while claiming that he was not. This doesn’t seem particularly tolerant — if Ravish maintains such a hostile attitude towards the merest insinuation that he is a Hindu, can his reporting on India’s Hindu population ever be fair and objective?
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