Tanya Yadav
‘The advantage of dyslexia is that my brain puts information in my head in a different way.” – Whoopi Goldberg
It seems as if our prime minister is not very fond of the word ‘different’ or ‘dyslexia’. Its true that dyslexic people don’t need sympathy of anyone, but PM Modi could not even show some sensitivity towards them.
That is the reason why he not only mocked a ’50-year-old dyslexic child’ , but he mocked all other children who are living normally with it. When a girl was telling him about her idea of helping dyslexic students at Smart India Hackathon, he gave the conversation a political turn. He dragged his opponent Rahul Gandhi in it by saying that ‘will this benefit people of 40-50 years of age.’ When the girl said yes he further said it ‘then mother of such child will be very happy.’
It is to note that Rahul Gandhi was born in 1970 and is of 48 years of age. This is not the first time that PM Modi has ridiculed Rahul in public like this. He infamously called Rahul Gandhi as ‘Pappu’ and often questioned his intelligence.
The mockery that our Prime Minister has made of Rahul doesn’t has merely political consequences. Opposition leaders might be calling him insensitive, which is true, but his response is quite serious. This insensitive gesture is also raising questions on his understanding of the issue. Instead of considering dyslexic people as ‘different’ who have creative minds, he considers them to be of low IQ. How can a leader work for betterment of dyslexic children when he thinks that it is cool to make fun of them?
He first need to learn the basics. He needs to understand that dyslexia is not a disease, dyslexic people doesn’t need sympathy. Many students tend to become drop outs or are unable to cope up like other students in certain subject. However, they can well explore their creative side. They just need freedom to chose their path, their own creative world. After all dyslexic people have done wonders in the world like Deepika Padukone, Orlando Bloom, Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Hrithik Roshan etc.
