New Delhi: Another ‘Shoegate’ has struck politics, with BJP Rajya Sabha MP G.V.L. Narasimha Rao the latest target. Rao was defending the candidature of Malegaon blast accused Sadhvi Pragya from Bhopal in a press briefing at the party headquarters in New Delhi Thursday when the shoe was hurled at him.
The shoe missed the MP, but left him stunned. The offender has since been identified as Shakti Bhargava, a Kanpur-based doctor.
Rao is the latest politician at the receiving end of a flying shoe, in a trend that began when the Iraqi TV journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi flung his footwear at the then-US President George W. Bush, who was holding a press conference in Baghdad, in 2008.
ThePrint chronicles the various instances of shoes being flung at politicians.
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Indian fling with footwear
India’s first reported ‘Shoegate’ was in 2009 when a journalist, Jarnail Singh, hurled a shoe at then-home minister P. Chidambaram during a press conference at the Congress headquarters.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) later handed Singh a Lok Sabha ticket from West Delhi for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. (Ironically, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal also had a shoe thrown at him during a press conference in New Delhi in 2016).
The method of protest caught on as several Indian political bigwigs became its targets. In 2009 itself, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and BJP veteran L.K. Advani had footwear hurled at them.
Pawas Agarwal, a former BJP district president, sent a slipper flying at Advani when he was holding a public meeting at Katni in Madhya Pradesh in April 2009. In the same month, then-PM Manmohan Singh was subjected to a shoe attack during an election rally in Ahmedabad.
In August 2010, then-Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah had a shoe hurled at him by a suspended police constable during an Independence Day function.
And in 2016, Congress president Rahul Gandhi was at the receiving end of a shoe attack in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur, where he was holding a roadshow.
A global spillover
Shoegate isn’t just confined to India in the subcontinent. A plethora of Pakistani leaders such as Pervez Musharraf (2013), Asif Ali Zardari (2010), Nawaz Sharif (2018), and incumbent Prime Minister Imran Khan (2018) have all had to contend with flying shoes.
The trend, however, has its origins in Iraq, when on 14 December 2008, journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi hurled a shoe at President Bush in protest against the American invasion of his country. “This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog,” Zaidi shouted, before hurling the shoe that narrowly missed Bush.
The journalist served nine months in prison for his actions. A Saudi Arabian man later said he was willing to pay $10 million for the shoes.
Then-Chinese premier Wen Jiabao was the next target of a shoe protest. A human rights protester was apprehended on 2 February 2009, after having thrown a shoe at Jiabao during a speech that the Chinese premier was making at Cambridge University.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was attacked with shoes as well as eggs at a book-signing event in Dublin, Ireland, in September 2010. The protesters were opposed to the Northern Ireland peace process.
During an Australian talk show in 2010, Iraqi war protester, Peter Gray, launched two shoes at former Australian prime minister John Howard for supporting the US-led invasion of Iraq.
In February 2013, then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was attacked with a shoe during a historic maiden visit to Egypt.
The former president of Taiwan (officially Republic of China) Ma Ying-jeou probably had it worse than anybody ever. Ying-jeou faced at least eight shoe attacks in 2013.
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