Being a decent man, Swami Ramdev was too quick to apologize. Also because his statement was made out to be anti-Dalits instead of being anti-RahulG which it actually was. But I thought he need not apologize for what he said in metaphor. “RG goes there to party and honeymoon”, here honeymoon is metaphor for “political pleasure making”. He goes there, enjoys sponsored food, gets pics clicked, all planned beforehand and enjoys this whole experience; takes pleasure out of it thinking of caste politics. This can be compared to the term he used, in political sense. From this aspect I think there is nothing wrong in this term. But since RGandhi has big clout in media, he ruined this whole experience into making it appears as anti-Dalit; while even a novice would accept that Swami Ramdev had nothing against Dalits when he gave this statement.
One of the dictionary meanings of the term ‘honeymoon’ is: “An initial period of enthusiasm or goodwill”. Therefore we have terms like “honeymoon period” for people new on a job. These meanings do not have anything to do with post-marriage holidaying or anything to do with marriage or wedding as an event. Therefore we have news titles appearing in global newspapers like, “Is the honeymoon over for Geert Wilders and Dutch Jews?” [Link], “Will Hillary Clinton’s Media Honeymoon Last?” [Link] etc.
So it appears that the use of the term by Swami Ramdev was not that much absurd, but Congressis gave his statement such a twist that it was entirely misunderstood. And of course our media is expert in using such unimportant statements for TRP purpose. Also, it indicates once again that in Indian politics, there is not much humor left – we had seen it w.r.t. 60 year old Ambedkar cartoon in a text book being blown out of proportion for political purpose.
My personal opinion is that Swami Ramdev’s statement was misunderstood and I don’t think there was anything wrong in using the term “honeymoon” for what Rahul Gandhi does for “political pleasure making”.
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