GUWAHATI: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has apologised for a Bhagavad Gita-based social media post on the Varna or caste system that he claimed was wrongly translated.
Taking to X, formerly Twitter, he said a sloka of Bhagavad Gita was translated incorrectly by one of his team members.
“As a routine I upload one sloka of Bhagavad Gita every morning on my social media handles. Till date, I have posted 668 slokas. Recently one of my team members posted a sloka from Chapter 18 verse 44 with an incorrect translation,” Sarma said.
He said as soon as he noticed the mistake, he had promptly deleted the post.
“The state of Assam reflects a perfect picture of a casteless society, thanks to the reform movement led by Mahapurush Srimanta Sankardeva. If the deleted post has offended anyone, I sincerely apologize,” he said.
The December 26 post, uploaded on his social media handles after an event on Bhagavad Gita in Haryana that he had attended, mentioned the duties of Vaishyas and Shudras towards the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas.
“Lord Shri Krishna himself described the natural duties of the Vaishyas and the Shudras,” the post in Assamese read.
It also mentioned that “farming, cow rearing, and commerce are natural duties of the Vaishya and serving the Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas is the natural duty of the Shudras.”
“Vedas, Upanishads, and Bhagavad Gita are the basis on which the Indian Constitution was written,” the post further read.
Leaders of opposition parties slammed the Assam CM after the post had gone viral on social media. Some said the statement demonstrated “regressive politics” and “RSS mentality”.
Last year, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had stated that the Varna system should be discarded. Incidentally, he was visiting Assam’s Majuli island when the controversy surrounding Sarma's post erupted.