‘I am a Shudra, may not know good Hindi’: Congress MP accuses Sitharaman of using divisive language

Congress MP A Revanth Reddy on Monday accused Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman of using “divisive language” in Parliament.

The MP from Malkajgiri posted clippings of Sitharaman’s speech in the Lok Sabha on Monday on Twitter. The finance minister was responding to a question about the depreciation of the rupee that Reddy had asked earlier.

“[The man] who hails from Telangana, he says his Hindi is weak,” Sitharaman remarked. “My Hindi is also weak, but I will respond to weak Hindi with weak Hindi.”

Subsequently, Reddy said that it was not appropriate for the minister to have commented about his language. “I am a Shudra, I may not know good Hindi,” he said in the Lok Sabha. “She may be a Brahmanwadi [Brahmin supremacist], so language may be good for her.”

Subsequently, the Congress MP said on Twitter that Sitharaman’s remarks were regrettable. “Like Britishers, BJP has always followed the politics of divide and rule,” he said. “They have divided the people of the country on the basis of language, food, caste and religion.”

However, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla took exception to Reddy’s remarks and warned MPs not to refer to anyone’s caste or religion in the House, PTI reported. He said that the parliamentarians were not elected to the House on the basis of caste or religion.

“Anyone here should never use such words in the House,” Birla said. “Otherwise, I will have to take action against such a member.”

Meanwhile, Sitharaman told the Lok Sabha that the rupee had remained strong against other countries. She said that the United States dollar was getting stronger due to policies adopted by the country’s federal reserve.

“The Reserve Bank of India has used the foreign exchange reserve that it has to intervene in the market only to make sure that the dollar-rupee fluctuation does not go too much...since volatility can lead to many different consequences,” Sitharaman said.