NEW DELHI: Assam minister Ashok Singhal’s X post on “gobhi farming” has sparked controversy. Following NDA’s landslide victory in the Bihar legislative elections, Assam’s minister of health and family welfare shared a picture of a cauliflower field with a caption, “Bihar approves gobhi farming.” Congress MO The social media since erupted in debates as to whether it referred to the infamous ‘cauliflower burial case’ that happened during the 1989 Bhagalpur riots. Social media users have expressed shock and disbelief after the minister appeared to reference a brutal massacre in a casual post, drawing widespread criticism for insensitivity and poor judgment. A user @isaifpatel quoted the post and called for Shashi Tharoor to get “influential Hindu leaders to condemn this normalisation of one of the worst pogroms perpetuated against Bihari Muslims.” In response, Shashi Throor stated that getting joint statements was not his job. He further went on to condemn the post as he wrote, “But as a passionate advocate of inclusive India 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.” During the 1989 riots in Bihar’s Bhagalpur, also known as the Logain massacre, killings of more than 100 muslims were reported. After the bodies of the victims were buried, to conceal the evidence, cauliflower saplings were planted all over the graves. The timing becomes important too because it happened just weeks before the general elections in which Congress government lost ground across much of North India.
