Modi is the king of acronyms in Indian politics. We have had acronym wars between Modi and the Opposition parties.
From his version of SCAM that stands for Samajwadi Party, Congress, Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati to when he wrongly spelled ‘STREANH’ (he meant STRENGTH) while on a visit to China in 2018, it is no secret that our prime minister has a fascination for acronyms.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that he has, yet again been bitten by the bad acronym bug. In his rally in Meerut on Thursday, 28 March, Modi said that the SP-BSP-RLD alliance in Uttar Pradesh is like sharaab (alcohol) that will destroy the people.
“‘Sha’ for SP, ‘Raa’ for RLD and ‘Ba’ for BSP together make ‘Sharaaba’. This sharaab (alcohol) will destroy you,” he said.
The juvenile and moreover, inaccurate (because SP’s Sa, RLD’s Ra and BSP’s Ba make ‘Sarab’) attempt at pun was greeted with laughs and comebacks on Twitter.
Add to this, the fact that Modi was reading from a teleprompter at the rally, Twitter had all the more reason to go into a tizzy.
SP Chief Akhilesh Yadav took to Twitter with a tweet that said “Today, the teleprompter revealed that those who promote the intoxication of hatred do not know the difference between ‘Sarab’ and ‘Sharab’.” He went on to say that ‘Sarab’ means mirage and it is a dream that BJP has shown for 5 years but failed to fulfill. “They are showing new ‘Sarab’ in this election too,” Akhilesh said.
Some other Twitter users made fun of the Sarab-Sharab reference too.
Rashtriya Janata Dal put out a rather sharp tweet that said, “Hasn’t learned the difference between ‘Sha’ and ‘Sa’ in five years. Let me teach you – ‘Sha’ from Shah, ‘Ra’ from Rajnath and ‘Ba’ from foolish BJP. You get ‘Sharab’ which is sold frequently in the dry state of Gujarat.”
BSP leader Mayawati also tweeted saying that this shows his fear of Mahagatbandhan and the “ugly and casteist mindset.”
Journalist Rohini Singh took a jibe at Modi and said this is what reading from a teleprompter does to you. It “can make you forget basic Hindi in your haste to come up with clever acronyms,” she said.
One Twitter user said Modi compared the OBC, Jat and Dalit communities with liquor. “He would never use the same reference for Brahmins, Thakurs etc,” he said.
Another Twitter user took it in his stride and said “when the ‘sharaab’ shows its strength in the election, BJP’s ‘nasha’ (Narendra Modi- Amit Shah) will fall.”
Then there were some obvious digs at his mispronunciation.
Maybe it is time our politicians moved from spouting bad vocabulary to real issues this election season.
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