New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who is often referred as a firebrand Hindutva leader, has landed in a soup for refusing to wear a skull cap at poet-saint Kabir mausoleum in Maghar.
According to a report in Financial Express, Adityanath had arrived in the town on Wednesday to take stock of preparation for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Thursday visit.
When he visited the mausoleum, where PM Modi will offer floral tributes to mark the 500th death anniversary of Kabir, the caretaker offered him a skull cap. As mausoleum caretaker Khadim Hussain moved to place the cap on the Chief Minister’s head, Adityanath politely declined.
“Stop stop… it is done," FE quoted CM as telling Khadim. To this, the caretaker said, “Sir, hold this (the cap) in your hand." The CM then agreed to his request and posed for a photo with the skull cap in his hand with Khadim standing next to him.
Khadim said that when he offered the skull cap to the CM he refused it very politely. “He was smiling while saying no to me," he said.
CM Adityanath’s refusal, however, did not go down too well with the opposition, with several leaders alleging that he was dividing the society on religious lines. Samajwadi Party spokesperson Sunil Sajan said that it was a cap of Kabir but CM must have misunderstood it. “…heights of hypocrisy it is, such people should not go the Kabir dhaam."
Congress leader Pramod Tiwari said that the cap doesn’t belong to any particular religion and it is just to show a gesture of respect. “A CM has to take everyone together. If someone is offering you a cap, pag, it is just a gesture to show respect. People occupying top offices have to take everyone together."
“If he (Khadim) offered him a cap, by wearing a cap for just one minute, it will not change your religion neither hurt you religious sentiment."
Meanwhile, the lone Muslim minister in the UP Cabinet Mohsin Raza jumped to Adityanath’s defence and questioned the intention behind offering caps to leaders. He suggested that religious gurus should restrain from indulging in such acts.
“By offering him a cap and when he refuses to wear it, what message you are trying to send? I am Muslim but I never wear a cap. Does this mean I am not a Muslim? Has he (Yogi Adityanath) committed a crime by doing so? Who told you to make him wear a cap? Why don’t you go to a temple, stand with people there, congratulate them? Change your thought."
In 2011, when Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, he refused to wear a skull cap offered to him by a cleric during a fast for social harmony in Ahmedabad.
A day earlier, the head of Kabir mutt in Maghar took a strong objection to PM Modi's visit, claiming that his consent was not been taken by the local organisers nor he has been invited to the event.
Expressing his objection, Varanasi’s Kabirchaura Moolgadi mahant Sant Vivekdas Acharya said, “I wonder why and how the jayanti celebration is being held at the place of nirvana, and that too without my knowledge. It is a common practice to take consent of the owner of the place for holding any programme, but the organizers did not bother even to inform me."
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