Updated: April 01, 2023 8:39 pm IST
William Shakespeare’s 1599 comedy “Much Ado About Nothing” seems to echo in India’s contemporary political discourse.
There is an attempt to stir up a brouhaha over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s educational qualification. Posters in Delhi by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) scream: “Kya Bharat ke PM padhe-likhe honey chahiye?” (According to AAP’s Delhi convenor and minister, Gopal Rai, the campaign is spread across 22 states). The campaign started after Rahul Gandhi was disqualified from parliament following his conviction by a court in Surat (which he is yet to challenge though he has a month’s window to do so). At a protest organised by the Congress, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said her “Harvard and Cambridge educated” brother was being victimised.
AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal shed his profound antipathy towards the Congress and on 25 March, while condemning the action against Rahul Gandhi, launched a diatribe in the Delhi assembly referring to Modi as “most corrupt Prime Minister… the least educated in the history of India”.
“I don’t think Independent India has had a PM who is a Class XII graduate,” Kejriwal declared.
This is not the first time that Kejriwal has questioned Modi’s education. His RTI application on this was upheld in April 2016 by then Chief Information Commissioner M.Sridhar Acharyulu (appointed by the UPA, the renowned academic now serves as the Dean of Mahindra University, Hyderabad). The order of CIC Acharyulu was set aside by the Gujarat High Court, which fined Kejriwal ₹ 25,000 for seeking information that is in the public domain.
“Doesn’t the country even have the right to know how much the PM has studied? An illiterate or less educated PM is very dangerous for the country,” said Kejriwal.
Polemics apart, let us ponder facts. In May 2016, soon after Acharyulu entertained Kejriwal’s RTI plea and sought details of Modi’s qualifications, two senior Union Ministers, Amit Shah and Arun Jaitley, briefed the media and shared photocopies of Modi’s graduation degree granted by Delhi University in 1979 and his post graduation degree from Gujarat University (1983), which stated that he had been an external candidate who had passed MA in First Class majoring in Political Science.