Right in the middle of Friday afternoon, as counting of votes in Bihar pointed to a big NDA win, a minister in the Himanta Biswa Sarma cabinet celebrated it with a cauliflower post, a grim reminder of the 1989 Bhagalpur massacre, in which many Muslims lost their lives.
“Bihar approves Gobi farming,” Ashok Singhal, the Assam Minister of Health & Family Welfare and Irrigation Department, posted on X, with an image of a lush cauliflower field.
At first, the post appeared out of place, like a square peg in a round hole. It required a double-take.
The cauliflower image was an apparent reference to the 1989 Bhagalpur massacre in Bihar, in which many Muslims were killed and buried in a farmland where cauliflower saplings were later planted to conceal the bodies.
“Gobi (cauliflower) farming” invokes the 1989 Bhagalpur massacre, in which more than 1,000 people were killed, with some investigations suggesting the toll may have surpassed 2,000. In Logain village, police later uncovered the bodies of 116 Muslims buried in mass graves over which cauliflowers had been planted to hide the killings. This imagery has since been adopted in contemporary right-wing digital spaces as a form of coded incitement against Muslims,” Diaspora in Action for Human Rights and Democracy posted on X.
A few hours after the initial post, the Assam minister credited Amit Shah for fashioning the big Bihar win and listed out a series of reasons. One among them was social engineering and cultural outreach.
“Hon’ble HM Amit Shah ji expanded the NDA’s social base through community outreach, empowerment of Nari Shakti and Yuva Shakti, and a strong cultural narrative,” he said.
However, the Minister’s initial post appears at odds with the “cultural outreach” he credits as the reason for Bihar win.
Amidst outrage and people calling out the BJP leader for the cauliflower post, he has neither deleted nor altered it.
Attacking the BJP leader, Congress’ Gaurav Gogoi, Deputy Leader of the Lok Sabha, called the post “vulgar and shameful”.
“The use of “gobi farming” imagery by a sitting Cabinet Minister of Assam in the wake of the Bihar election results marks a shocking new low in political discourse. It is both vulgar and shameful. The image is widely associated with the Logain massacre of 1989, where 116 Muslims were killed and their bodies concealed under cauliflower plantations during the Bhagalpur violence,” the Congress leader said.
“To invoke such a tragedy in this manner shows how far some are willing to descend in public life. This mindset is promoted by his boss Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. The Chief Minister has a hatred for Indian minorities. This is not what Assam is. Assam is the land of Mahapurush Sankardev , Lachit Borphukan and Azaan Pir. And next year the people of Assam will end the rule of hate and greed,” Gogoi, who respresents Jorhat in parliament, said.
Dr Mohammad Jawed, Congress MP from Bihar’s Kishnganj, also hit out at the BJP.
“The BJP/RSS cadre has only one thing to offer to their core voters! Muslim hatred,” the Congress MP said.
Senior Supreme Court lawyer Sanjay Hegde said the post was an “incitement to violence”.
“This is incitement to communal slaughter. You sir do not speak for me or for most Indians. You are violating your constitutional oaths and are unworthy of the high office you hold,” lawyer Sanjay Hegde posted on X.
An X user replied to the Assam BJP leader’s post, saying that a cabinet minister, no less, is “glorifying the massacre of 116 Muslims to celebrate an election victory”.
He tagged Shashi Tharoor and asked if the senior Congress leader could get a few influential Hindu leaders to condemn this “normalisation of one of the worst pogroms perpetuated against Bihari Muslims”.
“I’m not a community organiser, so joint statements are not my job. But as a passionate advocate of #InclusiveIndia and a proud Hindu, I can speak for myself, and for most Hindus I know, in saying that neither our faith nor our nationalism requires, justifies or condones such massacres, let alone applauds them,” Tharoor pointed out.
When another user said that he did not condemn the post, Tharoor responded, “That’s exactly what I did! I condemned it.”
Trinamool MP Saket Gokhale also slammed the post.
“‘Gobi farming’ refers to glorifying the mass killing of Muslims in Bhagalpur, Bihar, in 1989. A cauliflower farm was planted on the graves to hide evidence. This is Modi’s BJP Minister from Assam. Not some fringe element,” he said on Saturday.
