Telegraph puts Sushma Swaraj through the ‘Rajshri’ test

Two days after the Centre approved a Bill banning commercial surrogacy, The Telegraph – known for its witty, hard-hitting front pages – took potshots at External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday.

The front-page lead story, titled ‘Hum Aapke Hain Koun, SushMA?’ questioned Swaraj’s statement on surrogacy being against “Indian ethos”. The new surrogacy bill prohibits single parents, homosexuals, live-in partners, and foreigners from commissioning surrogacy. Childless or unmarried women are also not allowed to be surrogate mothers.

Swaraj had appealed to “ma, bhabhi, mausi, mami” to help childless relatives in carrying their child. The paper argued that in this day and age of nuclear families, such a big, happy family could only found in the movies of Rajshri Productions – which excels in making sentimental films revolving around the great Indian family.

In Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, probably the most famous movie ever made under the Rajshri banner, Nisha (the character played by Madhuri Dixit) adopts the child of her dead sister. The story quoted Harish Iyer, who calls himself an “equal rights activist”, as saying that with the new bill, the government has taken Rajshri Productions’ idea of a perfect family to the next level. Where Nisha would not just adopt the motherless child, but also lend her womb to a childless sister.

The article further puts various characters of the signature movie through what it calls the “Sushma Surrogacy Test”, to see how they would fare under the new surrogacy rules.

Towards the end of the article, the paper used pictures from Mangaluru, where BJP workers pelted actor and Congress leader Ramya’s car with eggs on Thursday. Ramya’s comment that “Pakistan is not hell” had raised the hackles of many. “Our ethos, Sushmaji? EGGXACTLY” the paper remarked. The connection the paper managed to draw between the surrogacy bill and protests against Ramya is a little laboured, though. Given Telegraph’s love for puns, the only reason the editors used the pictures was probably because they wanted to use ‘EGGXACTLY’. Not very clever, evidently!

Usually a hit on social media, The Telegraph’s front page hasn’t managed to get the desired traction this time.