Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi chooses woman facing terrorism charges as election candidate by zebatweets
BHOPAL, India - For nearly a decade, Pragya Thakur was known mostly as the saffron-clad Hindu ascetic shuttling in and out of Indian courts, flanked by police, facing charges under an anti-terrorism law for plotting a bomb attack on Muslims.
Overnight, Thakur, who has been out on bail since 2017, emerged as a symbol of a Hindu nationalist movement that is showing increasing intolerance towards Muslims in the Hindu-dominated nation. “They are addressing a very extreme form of the Hindutva fold,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a New Delhi-based biographer of Modi, referring to the BJP’s Hindu-first ideology.
Born in a village in central India, she grew up to become a leader of a youth group linked to the BJP, and usually clad in a shirt and jeans, hair cropped short, came to be referred to as “didi”, or elder sister, her sister Upma said. “I was there, I had broken the structure, and I will go back to build the temple,” Thakur said in a campaign speech, echoing BJP’s promise to build a temple at the mosque site.Thakur, whose family says she is a cancer survivor, has often wept while describing the torture she claims she endured in custody.
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