Congress leader Ramya tweets old Modi interview to rake up qualification row; retracts

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Tribune Web Desk
Chandigarh, September 18

Congress social media head Divya Spandana left her party red-faced on Tuesday when she tweeted an old 1998 interview of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in which he supposedly said he’d studied till high school, only to later retract it saying it was incomplete.

Spandana, an actress who goes by her screen name ‘Ramya’, tweeted the interview with a caption: “After much effort, I found this interview in which the prime minister admitted to having studied until high school but today he claims he holds a graduation degree that he completed in 1979”.

The shows Congress leader Rajiv Shukla, who was then a journalist, interviewing to Narendra Modi, then general secretary of the BJP, in his talk show ‘Ru-Ba-Ru’. 

The interview goes something like this:

Modi: Pehli baat toh main koi padha likha vyakti nahi hoon. Parmatma ki krupa hai aur isiliye mujhe nayi nayi cheezen jaan ne ka bada shauk raha hai. (First of all, I’m not a very educated person. It’s by god’s grace that I was curious to learn new things.)

Rajiv Shukla: Kitna padhe hain aap?(How much have you studied)

Modi: Waise toh maine 17 saal ki ayu mein ghar chhod diya. School ki shiksha ke baad nikal gaya. Tab se lekar aaj tak bhatak raha hoon nayi cheezen pane ke liye. (I left home when I was 17, after I finished school. I’ve been roving since, looking for new things to learn).

Rajiv Shukla: Sirf school tak padhe hain? Matlab primary school tak?(So you’ve only studied until primary school)

Modi: High school tak (Until high school)

The clip that Spandana tweeted got 3.7K re-tweets, but it was only one part of the interview.

A search for that the interview threw up this video.

In the clip, Modi is then heard saying: “Baad mein hamare Sangh ke ek adhikari the unke agrah par main external exam dena shuru kiya. Toh Delhi University se maine BA kar liya external exam de kar ke. Phir bhi unka agrah raha toh maine MA kar liya external exam se. Maine kabhi college ka darwaza dekha nahi”(On a Sangh worker’s insistence, I got my my BA and MA degrees externally. I’ve never seen the entrance of my college)

Spandana, upon realising that clip was incomplete, tweeted saying: “So that’s not the entire clip! Whatsapp!”

However, she didn’t delete the old tweet.

Modi’s educational qualifications have been a subject of great controversy. Questions have been raised over Modi’s BA degree from Delhi University and MA degree from Gujarat University, although both varsities have released statements certifying Modi’s stand.

So that’s not the entire clip! Whatsapp 🤦🏽‍♀️

— Divya Spandana/Ramya (@divyaspandana)