Rishi Kapoor tweets trigger row over use of Nehru-Gandhi names in public arena

Mumbai: Actor Rishi Kapoor was caught amid the vortex of a fresh controversy on social media on Wednesday. Late on Tuesday night, he posted a series of comments on Twitter against the Congress party’s naming of roads, infrastructure projects, public places and institutes after the Nehru-Gandhi family.
The flurry of tweets was reportedly prompted by the BJP’s demand to rename Delhi’s Akbar Road after Maharana Pratap.Earlier, too, the capital’s Aurangzeb Road was rechristened after former president A P J Abdul Kalam.
From 10.23pm to 11.39pm on Tuesday, Kapoor uploaded seven tweets urging the authorities to “change Gandhi family assets named by Congress”.
The actor has 1.07 million followers on Twitter. Within hours, each comment was retweeted thousands of times, and typically, the twitterati was split down the middle. Supporters demanded to know why state projects such as the Bandra-Worli Sea Link or Borivli National Park or Goregaon Film City should have gained their nomenclature from the Gandhi family. Kapoor’s critics, on the other hand, posted a list of all the airports in the country to show that only one terminal—the one in New Delhi—honours Indira Gandhi. Others are named after famous personalities of their states. Yet others pointed out the BJP government in Maharashtra runs schemes named after Gopinath Munde.
Kapoor’s comments come at a time when the Centre has begun removing names of the Nehru-Gandhi family from various government schemes. A section of observers asked if Kapoor was headed the way of actor Anupam Kher whose vocal support for the BJP, particularly Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is no secret.
Kher himself endorsed Kapoor’s views. He said, “Rishiji is an apolitical person so it is not right to see his statement through a political prism. He is merely saying that several achievers like J R D Tata, Lata Mangeshkar, Sunil Gavaskar or Dhyanchand have brought laurels to the country and should also get due recognition. I myself am not against naming places after national leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Lala Lajpatrai or Maulana Azad, or even after politicians sometimes. But why should most projects or schemes bear one surname, the surname of one political family?”
The Congress accused Rishi Kapoor of furthering the BJP’s agenda. On Wednesday evening, party workers demonstrated outside his Pali Hill bungalow Krishna Raj. Only, no one was home. The premises are under renovation. Ramchandra Jadhav, senior inspector, Khar police, said, “Six party workers were detained. They were shouting slogans but did not commit vandalism. We will decide whether to register a case against them.”
Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam said, “Rishi Kapoor fails to realize the contribution of the Gandhi family towards nation-building. I have sent him a list of airports in the country named after several important leaders, from Maharana Pratap and Shivaji Maharaj to Lal Bahadur Shastri. Saying everything is named after Gandhi family is not correct.”