Status Modi-fied: Narendra Modi admits he’s married

After maintaining silence on the issue for years, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has finally acknowledged his marriage in the affidavit that he was required to file on Wednesday along with his nomination papers in the Vadodara constituency of Gujarat for the coming Lok Sabha elections.

He mentioned his wife’s name, Jashodaben, in the column for the name of the candidate’s spouse in his affidavit. In a similar affidavit filed for the 2012 elections to the Gujarat Legislative Assembly, in which he led his party to a third consecutive win, Modi had left the column blank.

In Wednesday’s affidavit, uploaded onto the website of the Chief Electoral Officer of Gujarat today, Modi, however, has simply said “not known” in all other columns related to his wife, including details of her income and her income tax permanent account number (PAN) as well as her assets and liabilities and investments and properties.

Modi, 63, has not spoken in public about his wife, though some newspapers and magazines have occasionally reported about her and one of them carried an interview with her a few months ago. The reports said the couple, who got married when they were very young, had separated soon after.

His silence on the issue had invited attacks from his opponents and the Congress has repeatedly asked him to “come clean” on his marital status. Modi’s main opponent in Vadodara is prominent Congress leader Madhusudhan Mistry.

As Modi’s admission set off a flurry of comments by his supporters and opponents on social media websites, his elder brother Somabhai Damodardas Modi issued a three-page statement on Thursday, stating that the BJP leader was married to Jashodaben about 45-50 years ago when he was still a minor and the family was poor and uneducated.

Somabhai Modi said his brother had given up on all worldly things to dedicate his life in the service of the nation and his marriage, held at a time when his parents were struggling financially and had to adhere to various social customs and traditions of the time, should not be judged according to the standards of today. Somabhai Modi said their family was poor and not well-educated and had to adhere to social traditions and practices of those times. He said that his parents, who were not well-educated, could not recognize Narendra Modi’s zeal to dedicate his life for the nation. “In those circumstances, our parents got Narendrabhai married at a very young age,” he said.

He went on to say that Narendra Modi left his home and his wife soon after that and devoted his life to work for the country. “His marriage with Jashodaben was reduced to a mere formality,” he said.

“Today, even 45-50 years after that, Narendrabhai is away from his family. Jashodaben lives in her parents’ house and had worked in the field of education,” he said, referring to her career as a school teacher, from which she has retired recently. “This incident of 45-50 years ago should be seen against the background of the then prevailing circumstances of a poor and superstitious family. That is our prayer to everyone,” the statement added.

After becoming the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate, Modi had in some campaign speeches said that he had no family ties. “I am alone. Who will I be corrupt for?” he had asked, while drawing attention to allegations of corruption and nepotism against his political rivals.

Jashodaben, 62, told a newspaper recently that she was married to Modi when he was 17 and that they had separated three years later, after which they had never been in touch. Even in those three years they were together for hardly three months, the report quoted her as saying.

She also said that she knows that he will become the prime minister of the country one day and that she does not feel bad that he had cut her off from his life or that he had never acknowledged her. She said she reads everything about him, but does not think that he will ever call her.

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