Azam's Jaya Prada shocker is nothing new for SP. Mulayam Singh, son Akhilesh Yadav and seniors such as Abu Azmi have shown the way to go in anti-women attitudes.
New Delhi: While Samajwadi Party's senior leader Azam Khan might have surprised many after he remarked on the colour of opponent Jayaprada's undergarment, the UP-based party of strongmen has had a long history of anti-women sexist attitude.
A perusal of it's DNA on gender issues down the line, till Khan, will shock the politics out of you.
Party patriarch and it's tallest leader Mulayam Singh Yadav is himself guilty of gender insensitivity. In 2014, he called rape "a boys' mistake".
Speaking at a rally in Moradabad in 2014, he had sparked an outrage arguing against capital punishment for rape. "...ladke, ladke hain… galti ho jati hai (boys will be boys… they make mistakes).”
"Ladkiyan pehle dosti karti hain. Ladke-ladki mein matbhed ho jata hai. Matbhed hone key baad usey rape ka naam dey deti hain. Ladko sey galti ho jati hai. Kya rape case mein phasi di jayegi? (First, girls befriend boys and when there are differences of opinions, they slap a rape charge on boys... Boys commit mistakes, but will they be hanged for rape)."
Current party president and Mulayam's son Akhilesh Yadav not too long ago campaigned for a party colleague who was facing multiple rape charges.
Campaigning in Amethi's Gauriganj for UP assembly elections in 2017, Akhilesh campaigned for SP leader Gayatri Prajapati. The UP police had after a Supreme Court diktat filed FIR against Prajapati in separate cases of gangrape and attempt to rape a mother and her minor daughter.
While the nation was up in arms against the mass molestation of women on New Year's Eve in Bengaluru in 2017, SP's Abu Azmi exposed his victim-shaming culture.
"Aaj modern zamane mein jitna aurat nangi nazar aati hai, utna use fashionable kaha jata hai (Today, the more a woman appears naked, the more fashionable she is considered)," he had said.
And now Azam Khan has just added another feather to the SP's cap. "Jaya Prada's underwear is of saffron colour. It may have taken you 17 years to realise that, but I realised it in 17 days".
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