Mumbai: The civil service officer Nidhi Choudhari, who has been in the news for the last one week has now resorted to Gandhigiri. She has taken help of a scene from Sanjay Dutt-starrer Lage Raho Munna Bhai to justify her ‘sarcastic’ tweet which has been construed to be against Mahatma Gandhi.
Choudhari had on May 17 posted a tweet stating — “What an exceptional celebration of the 150th birth anniversary year is going on. High time, we remove his face from our currency, his statues from across the world, rename institutions/roads named after him. That would be real tribute from all of us ThankU #Godse from 30.01.1948.” The tweet had a photo of Gandhi’s dead body along with it.
From the very day the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) highlighted her tweet and demanded action against her, Choudhari has been widely criticised by citizens for her tweet. She has however, claimed that her ‘sarcasm’ was misconstrued. Now having been ‘punished’ with a transfer, the former deputy municipal commissioner has now taken help of the Bollywood film Lage Raho Munna Bhai.
In conversation with The Free Press Journal, Choudhari highlighted a scene from the film wherein the character playing Gandhiji can be heard of urging people to remove his photograph from the currency and also to remove all his statues.
“Whatever I tweeted, the similar content was shown in Lage Raho Munna Bhai where character of Gandhiji speaks for removing his photo from notes, deleting his statutes, etc because if we cannot keep Gandhiji in our hearts, other things are only symbolic,” Choudhari told FPJ. She further justified, “If this scene wasn’t wrong even my tweet was proper. I deny that there was linguistic exaggeration in it.”
Choudhari still sticks to her word and continues to give the ‘sarcasm’ excuse. She said, “A purely sarcastic tweet was interpreted just with opposite meaning but that happened because people picked it up after 15 days & missed the context completely.”
While further justifying her tweet, especially her ‘thanks to Godse’ Choudhari said, “The thanking part and the image has not made the tweet look bad in taste. In fact, the image of funeral procession rather evokes pathos and Thank You Godse for 30.1.1948 in the tweet, meant that had Gandhiji been alive he would have been murdered every day.”
