The unfortunate controversy triggered by Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Choudhary addressing the newly elected President of India, Draupadi Murmu, as ‘Rashtrapatni’ continues to dominate newspaper headlines. There have been protests both inside and outside the parliament, with some BJP leaders describing Choudhary’s self-confessed “slip of tongue” as a case of intentional cheek.
Choudhary has since apologized for his mistake, but the controversy is far from over. A section of opposition leaders, including some from Odisha, where the party protested even inside the state assembly, have sought an apology from Congress president Sonia Gandhi. With some even portraying the incident as a case of not only deliberate disrespect to the President, but also the tribal community she belongs to, Choudhary finds him out on a limb.
The other interesting aspect of the controversy is that it has reopened the debate on whether there can be a gender-neutral expression to address the person holding the top constitututional post of the country. This is not the first time the issue is being bandied about. It was discussed even by the framers of the Constitution, but apparently they thought that Rashtrapati or President as an address was fair enough.
When Pratibha Patil entered the Rashtrapati Bhavan, some people had raised the issue of how she should be addressed as she happened to be the first woman to occupy the high office. In an age where terms such as spokesperson and sportsperson have gained much currency because of their gender-neutrality, it was considered necessary to come up with a gender-neutral expression to address the President.
The brouhaha around the ‘Rashtrapatni’ word is bound to make linguists and other experts launch the search for a word that could be used to address either a male or a female President without showing any gender bias. There is no doubt that is going to take some time.
For the present, however, even though Choudhary has offered his apologies and promised to behave more responsibly in the future, the political controversy over his indiscretion – or “slip of tongue”, as he calls it – still has a lot of legs. In other words, it is unlikely to die down anytime soon.
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