Two intimate video clips featuring Gujarat’s Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti leader Hardik Patel with a woman, and holding a drink in his hand, are being widely shared on social media this week. The emergence of the videos in the middle of a heated election campaign raises questions about privacy, public image, defamation, and political morality. Patel has called it a sign of dirty politics, an invasion of his privacy, and “character assassination”.
Should sex tapes of politicians be part of political discourse and can they influence election outcomes in India?
The right to consensual sex is like the right to live. It’s a fundamental right of adults. I really pity those who are making an issue of the alleged Hardik Patel CD. I don’t know whether Hardik is in the tapes, but whoever it is, even if it is Hardik, how does it become a prime-time media issue?
The BJP is trying very hard to publicise this as if someone has done something for which the nation should be ashamed. A boy and a girl, both adults, are willingly doing something in private. Who has the right to snoop into someone’s bedroom? Be it Hardik, or even Amit Shah or Narendra Bhai Modi, why should someone make a CD of their private lives?
The Gujarat elections are less than a month away, and if the ruling party in engaged in tarnishing the image of a young boy who can’t even contest elections, it says something.
Here are other sharp perspectives on the sex tapes and scandals influencing election outcomes:
Yashwant Deshmukh: psephologist
Ashwini Kumar: poet, author, and professor at TISS Mumbai
Sanjay Hegde: senior advocate, Supreme Court
Shekhar Gupta: chairman and editor-in-chief, ThePrint
They first tried to do ‘Ram vs Haj’ in their posters, and are now peeping into people’s bedrooms. But contrary to what they thought, this CD drama has damaged the BJP; people can now see how low the party can go in frustration.
Yes, there will be a political impact, and it will hit the BJP hard enough to throw it out of power. This is just the beginning.
The BJP will resort to many such things closer to the elections, but people have made up their minds. Gujarat is looking for a vikas CD, not a CD of someone’s personal life. The party has accepted defeat when the fight is yet to begin.
Jignesh Mevani, lawyer and Dalit leader from Gujarat