Sharad Yadav sparks off war of clichés

Lohiaite leader Sharad Yadav must be commended for thinking so tangentially that while rising to voice his considered opinion in the august halls of Parliament on the weighty issue of foreign direct investment (FDI), he sparked off an impromptu debate on gender and skin colour instead. These issues obviously need to be thrashed out — if not quite in the manner prompted by his comments. But those with an aversion to clichés have reason to be thoroughly annoyed by the fallout of his intervention. For, while Yadav’s statements and lack of regret are not surprising, by reducing FDI to a potentially steamy collage of sultry female bodies, he has reinforced several other usually unarticulated stereotypes, as is obvious from the tenor of the criticism he is drawing.

After all, those outraged by his views on ‘dark’ south Indian dancers dismissed him in similar coin as the usual Neanderthal north Indian male. Hopefully, those who share his gender, region, caste and other affiliations will be goaded to speedily classify him an aberration instead of the norm too. However, north Indian women should be the most outraged. For, implicit in the Hindi heartland leader’s praise for swarthy, supple south Indian dancers is his probable implicit belief that north Indian females are fair, flabby stumblebums. That surely should not go uncontested.