BJP’s ‘Brahmin from Bihar’, union minister revels in foul language

While there is outrage over Union Minister of State for Health Ashwini Choubey declaring that Congress President Rahul Gandhi is a ‘Schizophrenic’ and a ‘sewer worm’ (Naali ka keeda) compared to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his foul language have long ceased to surprise or shock people back in his home state Bihar. Even BJP does not take him seriously in Bihar, exclaimed a bemused observer in Patna and asked, “why should others ?”

BJP’s Brahmin face from Bihar was responding to the controversy over the Rafale scam and Rahul Gandhi calling Prime Minister Modi a liar. Those who know his background are certain that the wily Brahmin minister is either betraying nervousness or trying to score brownie points with party leaders.

Known as a hot-headed rabble rouser, the BJP veteran surprisingly lists ‘Yoga, listening to classical music and watching Kathak dance’ as his pastime in the Lok Sabha directory. But while his interest in Yoga can be compared to a fashion statement, there is little in his demeanour to suggest he is calm or cool.

Said to be BJP’s Brahmin face in Bihar, he is seldom taken seriously outside this caste constituency, although people do have a healthy respect for his wily mind. He never says or does anything without calculating the cost and benefit, say people who have known him closely.

As health minister of Bihar he had famously declared that hands of striking doctors would be chopped off. Last year, while addressing a gathering at the All India institute of Medical sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi, he upset people from Bihar by saying that they were unnecessarily crowding AIIMS even for minor ailments. He also declared that he had instructed doctors at AIIMS to send back such patients to Bihar.

His frequent pot shots at Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi is almost certainly due to his belief that it would make Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah happy and help him within the party. He is actually said to be close to both, or it could be a carefully cultivated myth that the Brahmin from Bihar promoted.

He had earlier compared Sonia Gandhi to the mythological demon ‘ Putana’ who was sent by King Kansa to kill lord Krishna when he was still an infant. He had declared that both Lalu Yadav and Nitish Kumar (just ahead of the 2015 Bihar election when the grand alliance between RJD, JD(U) and Congress was still intact) seemed eager to consume poison and die. He had then called Rahul Gandhi a ‘foreign parrot’.

JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar was then quoted as saying that the foul language used by Choubey was an indication of nervousness within the BJP. He had also told a gathering of JD(U) youth wing that the statement made by Choubey was not a slip of tongue but a deliberate statement. Choubey had then described Lalu Yadav and Nitish Kumar as Ranga-Billa, an allusion to two Delhi criminals hanged for the abduction and murder of two children, Sanjay and Geeta Chopra in the seventies.

In April this year Choubey had lost his cool in Varanasi when asked about BJP’s prospects in the next general election. There was no way Congress could win even four seats with a ‘dumb’ (Goonga) Rahul at the helm, he had fulminated.

When his son Arijit was named in an FIR in March this year and later arrested briefly following communal violence in Bhagalpur, Choubey had declared that he was proud of his son, who had led a procession on Ram Navami flaunting a sword, and believed he had done nothing wrong.