An Epic Life: Ramanand Sagar: From Barsaat to Ramayan

by PREM SAGAR

titled, ‘Rajiv Gandhi Was the Father of BJP’. I reproduce below, partially, the views published in the press for readers to form their own opinion. In mid-1980s, after Rajiv Gandhi came into power, some of his actions indeed helped the struggling BJP (still in a stage of infancy) get its first big break. The year 1986 was a landmark year in the history of India due to the communal politics played by Rajiv Gandhi which helped BJP take off. A seventy-two-year-old divorced woman named Shah Bano was entitled for alimony (maintenance sum) as per Indian law from her ex-husband, but it was denied to her because she was from the Muslim community, which followed its own personal law that did not have such a provision of alimony for a divorced woman. The case went up to the Supreme Court of India, which followed the rule book (Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code of India) and granted the verdict in her favour by ordering her ex-husband to provide her monthly maintenance money. This apparently did not go down well with the orthodox leaders of the Muslim community, who saw this as an attack on Islam (because the orthodox leaders did not want the state to interfere in their personal law). This, in turn, led to a mass outrage among Muslims who began protesting against the Supreme Court and the Rajiv Gandhi government. As an immature politician who had taken the position of the prime minister after his mother Indira Gandhi’s death, Rajiv Gandhi lacked the political experience to h...