The political slugfest over Lord Hanuman’s religion got a new twist when state Bharatiya Janata Party’s cabinet minister Laxmi Narayan Chowdhary claimed that the deity was a Jat. He created a furore in the Vidhan Parishad by jokingly calling Lord Hanuman a Jat. “I think Hanuman Ji was a Jat. It is in the nature of a Jat to help anyone who is in trouble, irrespective of whether the concerned person is known to him or her. It is similar to the way in which Hanuman joined Lord Ram to rescue Sita after she was abducted by Raavan,” he said.
This is the third identity given to the deity by BJP leaders in UP. First, the UP Chief Minister give Him an identity of Dalit. During campaigning for recently concluded Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in a poll rally in Alwar had said that Lord Hanuman was a Dalit. “Hanuman was a forest dweller, deprived and a Dalit. Bajrang Bali worked to connect all Indian communities together, from north to south and east to west,” he had said.
Later BJP MLC Bukkal Nawab had claimed that the deity was a Muslim. “Hanuman belongs to the whole world, every religion…,” Nawab had said. Nawab claimed that Muslim names are “almost similar” to those of Lord Hanuman. “I believe that Lord Hanuman was a Muslim. That is why the names of the people in Islam is almost similar to Lord Hanuman, whether it is Rehman, Ramzan, Farman, Zeeshan and Qurban. Such types of names are found in Islam only,” said Nawab. He further claimed that these names were derived from Lord Hanuman; had he not been there these names would not have existed.
A priest in Bhopal had also joined the bandwagon after he claimed that Lord Hanuman was neither a Dalit nor a tribal, but a Jain.
Following this, various political parties condemned Adityanath’s remarks, with Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav taking a jibe at him, asking the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister to disclose the caste of other deities as well.
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