Journalists And Influencers Pass Casteist, Regional And Religious Hate Remarks Against Drunk Flyer Who Peed On Fellow Air India Passenger

A man was recently arrested by the police for the obnoxious act of urinating on a woman in flight. The person, who is in his late 30s, allegedly got drunk to the point of being incoherent in speech, unzipped his pants and urinated on a 70-year-old woman.  

After the woman complained about the incident to Air India group chairman alleging inaction on part of the staff present, the airlines filed a complaint with the police on 4 January. 

The police arrested the person, identified as Shankar Mishra, from Bengaluru last week. Mishra is currently in judicial custody. His employer, California-based Wells Fargo bank, sacked him from the job.

The incident, which took place in the business class of Air India New York-New Delhi flight in December, has left Indians shocked and disgusted. On social media, many called for an end to the practice of serving a large quantity of liquor in flight, while others called out Indians as a lot for being unruly travellers, when compared to residents of several other countries. 

Some others had an entirely different comment to make — that of calling out the man’s caste and native language. 

Controversial journalist and columnist Sagarika Ghose, tweeted this after the man’s identity was revealed in the media, “…it’s Mishraji from the Bimaru Hindi heartland”. She added about the case that it’s “a cautionary tale for those imposing Hindi belt behaviour codes on all”.

Yes, you read it right. The accused’s behaviour was credited to not his inability to hold his liquor, but to his Mishra caste and the Hindi language widely spoken in the area where a large number of people from Mishra caste live. Ghose also used the Bimaru tag for shaming the ‘Hindi heartland, suggesting that it’s Hindi that has made the Bimaru states lagging in economic growth.

BIMARU is an abbreviation for Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, and was coined in 1980s by demographer Ashish Bose in a paper. The research claimed that these states, home to 40 per cent population that time, lagged significantly behind the southern states but were contributing the most to population.

At that time, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand were part of these states. 

Journalist Rajdeep Sardesai, who is also Ghose’s husband and also controversial, picked up on the accused’s caste and religious identity when he tweeted this, “So drunk biz man found urinating on Co passenger in flight is one Shekhar Mishra: what if his name was a Khan?”

It may be noted that Rajdeep and Ghose belong to Brahmin and Kayastha castes respectively, and live in largely Hindi speaking New Delhi. 

The accused’s caste was also picked up by “Ambedkarites”, “Dalit activists” and Islamists, who mentioned his “Brahmin” surname while criticising the incident (read here, here and here).

Some used the incident to pass anti-Hindu slurs. A Twitter handle called Dalit Chef tweeted, “So you wanna say Gau Mutra has better value than Brahmin Shankar Mishra's Mutra?”

The “gaumutra” jibe is common among Pakistanis for Indians, as a religious jibe for its Hindu majority, and is routinely used by Jihadi terror groups to threaten attack on India.

In March 2019, a member of Pakistan-based Jihadi group Jaish-e-Mohammed named Adil Ahmad Dar released a video calling Indians as “gaumutra drinkers” and appealing Indian Muslims to do “Jihad” before launching a suicide attack targetting the Indian security forces. The attack left 49 soldiers of Central Reserve Police Force dead.

Global terror group ISIS routinely instigates hate and calls of genocide against Hindus of India by defining them as cow-worshipping and gaumutra-drinking people.

In response to such casteist, regional and religious hate over the accused’s name, many social media users began digging past and recent incidents of similar obnoxious behaviour displayed by people who aren’t from the “Hindi heartland” or Mishras.

They recalled the 2018 incident when former Jawaharlal Nehru University’s students’ union president and now Congress member Kanhaiya Kumar, was called out by a woman for publicly urinating and not apologising despite her objection, but no one among the so-called “liberal” commentators criticised Kumar for it. 

The woman, a former JNU student, told the media that when she confronted Kumar urinating in the open, in the campus, he misbehaved with her and threatened her.

Close on the heels of Mishra’s arrest, a case has come to light where another drunk man was caught urinating at Terminal-3 of the Delhi Airport in the open and abusing other passengers for objecting. The incident took place on 8 January. The man, who was arrested and released on a jail bond, has been identified as Jauhar Ali Khan.

The revelation of his identity has against caused a furore on social media with users confronting Ghose, Sardesai and others on why they are not picking on the man’s religious or caste identity.