Uttar Pradesh Assembly Speaker Hriday Narayan Dixit on Sunday stoked a controversy when he said that dressing scantily cannot turn a “Rakhi Sawant” into Mahatma Gandhi.
He made the controversial remarks at the ‘Prabuddh Varg Sammelan’ (Meeting of Intellectuals) organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Bangarmau Assembly constituency of Unnao district.
While addressing the gathering there, he said, “In our opinion, no one has become an intellectual by writing a book on any topic. If that was the case for so many years, I have read at least 6,000 books.”
“Gandhiji used to dress scantily. He used to wrap just a dhoti. The country called him Bapu. If somebody could become great just by taking their clothes off, then Rakhi Sawant would have become greater than Mahatma Gandhi,” he added.
After a video clip of his speech went viral on social media, the Uttar Pradesh Assembly Speaker took to his official Twitter handle to issue a clarification on the matter.
“Some friends in social media are showing the clip of a video of my speech with an otherwise meaning. This was the part of my speech at the ‘prabuddh sammelan’ in Unnao, in which the moderator of the ‘sammelan’ introduced me saying that ‘I am an enlightened writer’.”
सोशल मीडिया पर कुछ मित्र मेरे भाषण के एक वीडियो अंश को अन्यथा अर्थों के संकेत के साथ प्रसारित कर रहे हैं। वास्तव में यह उन्नाव के प्रबुद्ध सम्मेलन में मेरे भाषण का अंश है। जिसमें सम्मेलन संचालक ने मेरा परिचय देते हुए मुझे प्रबुद्ध लेखक बताया था।
— Hriday Narayan Dixit (@Speaker_UPLA) September 19, 2021
“I took this point forward saying that no one becomes an intellectual by writing some books. Mahatma Gandhi used to dress scantily. The country called him ‘Bapu’. But, that does not mean Rakhi Sawant will become a Gandhi-ji,” Dixit said.
“Friends, take my speech in the right context,” he said.