PM Modi’s jibe in the Rajya Sabha has set the cat amongst the pigeons. During his speech, Modi referred to an old speech of ex-Home Minister L K Advani to mention that AADHAR was actually conceptualised at that point. Hearing this, Congress MP Renuka Chaudhury started laughing hysterically.

Rajya Sabha speaker and Vice President Venkaiyah Naidu chided her for her “unruly behaviour”. PM Modi too did not let the opportunity go. He requested the speaker that he must not stop Renuka Chowdhury. He added further, “many years after Ramayan we are getting to hear such a hearty laughter.”

It took a while but soon social media users began deciphering the cryptic comment. There was a debate whether Modi was referring to the Taraka the demon or Shurpanakha, Ravana’s sister. This debate seems to have been settled by left liberals.

NDTV’s Nidhi Razdan batted for “freedom of laughter”:

Let anyone laugh the way they want — Nidhi Razdan (@Nidhi) February 8, 2018

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But the slightly slower ones began defending Shurpanakha, thus giving rise to the Shurpanakha Defence League. Sagarika Ghose chose to paint Shurpanakha as the victim of a “patriarchal” society, who was wronged at the hands of a “righteous oh-so-pure male hero”. Her husband Rajdeep Sardesai seemed to concur and retweeted her:

Columnist Ashok Swain too joined the league, claiming that Shurpanakha was “misunderstood” and called the act, an “act of cowardice” by a “male chauvinist”.

Both argued how Shurpanakha’s love for Ram was treated in an unduly harsh manner by Ram. Using such a line of argument perhaps served multiple purposes: defending Shurpanakha was akin to defending the Congress MP who is said to laugh like her PLUS it was a golden chance to train their guns at a Hindu God namely Ram.

Alas, social media users made them realise how their understanding of the incident was totally wrong. History buff social media user TrueIndology parsed through the ancient texts to show that Shurpanakha was not the victim and had in fact tried to kill and eat Sita, which is why Laxman had to take the step of chopping her nose off.

Lakshmana pierced the nose of Shurpanakha not because he was a male chauvinist. The jealous cannibal Shurpanakha was about to kill and eat Sita@sagarikaghose should be booked for hurting religious sentiments, promoting enemity, disturbing communal harmony, inciting riots pic.twitter.com/f6ChTCYq0G — True Indology (@TrueIndology) February 8, 2018

It is indeed comical how a mild retort by Modi, to a woman who was uncouth, has evoked such a response that our secular left liberals have begun rewriting Indian texts and have found shelter in attacking Hindu Gods. It is another issue that talking in such a manner about some other religions can trigger off riots.