A tribal clan in the eastern Himalayas is miffed with Congress president Rahul Gandhi because he allegedly equated them with thieves.
Modi is a clan of the Adi community that mostly inhabits central Arunachal Pradesh. The Modis, numbering about 5,000, are from the Mariyang area of the State’s Upper Siang district.
Some members of the clan took offence when Mr. Gandhi — addressing an election rally at Nanded in Maharashtra in April — asked: “Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi, Narendra Modi... How come all the thieves have Modi in their names?”
Apart from the Prime Minister, the Modis that Mr. Gandhi targeted are the fugitive diamond merchant now in a United Kingdom jail and the former chief of the Indian Premier League banned for life by the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
What offended the Modis of Arunachal Pradesh was what Mr. Gandhi added to his ‘thief’ analogy at an earlier rally in Karnataka’s Kolar. “We don’t know how many such Modis will come out,” he had said.
On May 8, advocate Omit Modi filed a criminal defamation suit in his hometown Pasighat against Mr. Gandhi for his remark on the surname ‘Modi’. The court of Chief Judicial Magistrate subsequently issued a summons to the Congress president.
Pasighat, the headquarters of East Siang district, is about 570 km northeast of Guwahati.
“The statement was not made in good faith but to malign the reputation of the persons having Modi as surname,” Mr. Omit Modi said, adding that the court has asked Mr. Gandhi to appear before it on July 24.
A spokesperson of the community-based Modi Welfare Society said that people should use their freedom of expression with caution in order not to hurt sentiments.
‘Owe an apology’
“It is unfortunate that Mr. Gandhi has inadvertently insulted the Modi clan. We owe them an apology,” a leader of the Arunachal Pradesh unit of the Congress said on condition of anonymity.
The Adis are among the largest indigenous communities in the State. A small population of their community inhabits the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China where they are called Lhoba.
