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The following tweets by Patel, dripping with satire, show what he thinks of PM Modi. But is that a crime that calls for police investigation? Let us look at his tweets on September 25.

There is also no dispute about the three tweets from June this year for which he was summoned by the police in Surat. They were fairly straight forward and did say that the Prime Minister belonged to the Ghanchi community, that the community was actually well off and Muslim Ghanchis were said to be responsible for setting railway coaches on fire at Godhra in 2002, triggering the riots. No investigation is needed to establish that Patel did tweet them.

The record shows that Muslim Ghanchis were included in the OBC list in 1993, Telis in 1999 but Modh Ghanchis were included in 2000. (An earlier report had erroneously mentioned that Patel had made a mistake in tweeting that Ghanchis were included in the list during the tenure of Vajpayee. The error is regretted.)

It is, however, instructive to see what the Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself had said about Ghanchis and OBCs. During his prime ministerial campaign in 2014, writes retired bureaucrat P.S. Krishnan, Modi had declared that the coming decade will be the decade of Dalits, Adivasis and the Picchade Varg (Socially and Educationally Backward Classes). He had also said that in the six decades after independence, the SCs, STs and SEdBCs had not got their due and it was for him to fulfil the task.

Krishnan also noted, Modi had, in his speeches of 2014, outlined what he would do for weavers (who are Muslim SEdBCs in Varanasi and most of north India, Hindu SEdBCs in the south, SCs in the west and north-west, Hindu and Muslim SEdBCs in the east and STs in the northeast) and fisher-folk (Hindu, Christian and Muslim SEdBCs in the south and SCs in the east and north east).

Clearly, naming Backward Castes or OBC communities, referring to their backwardness etc., is not a caste slur. So, how did Aakar Patels tweets defame the Prime Minister or the community? Media reports do provide a clue and suggest that the complainant is blaming Patel for linking the Hindu Ghanchis and the Prime Minister by implication with the Godhra train burning incident when he tweeted that Muslim Ghanchis were said to be behind the arson? The complainant points out that Hindu Ghanchis had nothing to do with Muslim Ghanchis but by association it has been implied that Modi, then the Gujarat CM, was behind the burning of the train. Makes any sense? It clearly does to Surat Police.

Surat Police did take cognizance and Patel did have to fly from Bangalore to Surat, obtain anticipatory bail and spent the better part of a day in the company of the Crime Branch.

Patel had got anticipatory bail from the Surat Sessions court on in the case registered under IPC Sections 153 (A) (promoting enmity between different groups), 295 (A) (intent to insult a class of people), 505(1), (b), (c) (public statement intent to cause fear among public) and 499 and 500 (defamation) following a complaint filed by Purnesh Modi.

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Making sense of PM Modis caste, Aakar Patels tweets and defamation - National Herald