Aam Aadmi Party leader Kumar Vishwas has apologised for the racist remarks he had allegedly made against nurses from Kerala saying he had never intended to hurt anyone’s feelings.
In a statement of apology he sent to the AAP’s Kerala leadership via e-mail, Vishwas said he had never tried to hurt anyone’s sentiments intentionally. Vishwas had got into the controversy after a video-clipping containing a speech — in which he had allegedly used ‘racist’ remarks against female nurses from Kerala — he had delivered in 2008 at Ranchi spread over the Internet.
“It has come to my knowledge that an old video clip of one of my Kavi Sammelans has hurt the feelings of my friends residing in Kerala. I must say that I don’t appreciate any discrimination based on religion, region, gender, caste or creed. I never tried to intentionally hurt the sentiments of anyone,” he said in the e-mail sent to the Kerala AAP leadership.
The AAP leader said in the mail that the jokes he had delivered at the Kavi Sammelan were written and presented in a lighthearted manner without any intention to hurt the feelings of anybody. “If some words have hurt the sentiments of my friends, I apologise to them from the depth of my heart,” he said.
Vishwas’s apology came within hours of Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy writing a letter on Tuesday to his Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal expressing anger over the statement. The United Nurses Association of Kerala had threatened to initiate legal proceedings against Vishwas over his ‘racist’ remarks.
AAP’s Kerala leaders KP Ratheesh and Manoj Padmanabhan had the other day apologised to the Malayalee nurses for Vishwas’s 2008 remarks. Manoj and Ratheesh said that they had forwarded the nurses’ demand for an apology from Vishwas to him through the national executive of the party.
As per the video clip, Vishwas had described nurses from Kerala as “kali-peeli” (black-skinned) girls whom one would naturally like to address only as sisters. “Earlier, these nurse girls, kali-peeli, used to come from Kerala. The first word that would come out of one’s lips at their sight was sister,” was what he had said about the Malayalee nurses.