Following Opposition furore, Maharashtra Home Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday (June 27) assured the Legislative Assembly that those responsible for posting allegedly derogatory content against pioneering 19th century educationalist Savitribai Phule would be brought to book.
Mr. Fadnavis was responding to a question raised by Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) legislator and Sharad Pawar faction leader Jitendra Awhad, who questioned the State’s foot-dragging over the probe against two controversial websites – ‘Indic Tales’ and ‘Hindu Post’ – who had allegedly published content attempting to malign the trailblazing reformer’s reputation.
In response to Mr. Awhad’s query, Mr. Fadnavis, who is also Deputy CM, told the Assembly that the police were in touch with Twitter India to identify the persons behind a handle that posted derogatory remarks against Savitribai Phule.
Mr. Fadnavis said the Maharashtra police had already filed cases against the Twitter handle @bharadwajspeaks and digital platforms ‘Indic Tales’ and ‘Hindu Post’ which had published the allegedly defamatory posts.
“The police are awaiting a reply from Twitter India and action will be taken after the identity of those behind the handle is established,” said the State Home Minister.
Mr. Fadnavis’ reply, however, failed to convince the Congress legislators, causing the Opposition to stage a walkout.
Congressman Balasaheb Thorat, taking strong objection to Mr. Fadnavis’ reply, questioned the tardiness in action on part of the State government.
Mr. Thorat observed that while Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was swiftly slapped with a two-year jail sentence and disqualification as an MP (over his “Modi surname” remark), the ruling BJP-Eknath Shinde government was procrastinating action against these websites defaming a personage like Savitribai Phule.
In May this year, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde had directed senior authorities to probe the websites after senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leaders had staged a protest and several social outfits had raised strong objections.
Mr. Shinde had accordingly directed the Chief Secretary to scrutinize the contents of ‘Indic Tales’ and take stern action taken against it if the allegations were found to be true.
The article published on the ‘Indic Tales’ website titled “Why Hindu Female Teachers before Savitribai Phule are not Recognized” says that Savitribai Phule’s school was sponsored by British missionaries and questions the British motives for supporting her project.
The article in ‘Hindu Post’ (dated January 5, 2022) titled ‘Was Savitribai Phule really the “first female teacher” in Bharat?’ questions whether Savitribai was indeed the first female teacher in India, while attributing that credit to Hotee Vidyalankar, a Bengali Hindu widow, who, as per the article, was a scholar of Sanskrit poetry, law, mathematics and ayurveda. The article claims she established a school in Varanasi for women and died 21 years before Savitribai was born (1831). The article further claims Savitribai Phule allegedly wrote poems “glorifying British and Christianity.”
