Nupur Sharma (born 23 April 1985) is an Indian politician and lawyer. She was the national spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) until June 2022, when she was suspended due to comments about Muhammad.
India is in the midst of a diplomatic nightmare over controversial comments made by a senior official from the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) about the Prophet Muhammad.
Nupur Sharma’s remarks, made in a TV debate about 10 days ago, have incensed Indian Muslims and outraged more than a dozen Islamic nations.
On Sunday, the BJP suspended Ms Sharma from the party. The head of the party’s Delhi media unit, Naveen Kumar Jindal, was also expelled for sharing a screenshot of her offensive comment in a tweet.
In a statement, the BJP said it was “against any ideology which insults or demeans any sect or religion” and added that it did not “promote such people or philosophy”.
And in an attempt to placate angry Islamic nations, Indian diplomats have said the comments did not reflect the stand of the government and that they were “views of fringe elements”.
But as many have pointed out, Ms Sharma is no fringe element.
Until she was axed, the 37-year-old lawyer was a much sought-after “official BJP spokesperson” who appeared night after night on TV debates to represent and defend Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
A student of law at Delhi University, Ms Sharma began her political career in 2008 when she was elected as the president of the students’ union as a candidate of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh movement.
Her political career picked up pace in 2011 when she returned to India after doing her masters in international business law from the London School of Economics.
Brash and articulate, her ability to argue and put forth her point of view in both English and Hindi won her a place in the BJP’s media committee for the 2013 Delhi assembly elections.
Two years later when fresh elections were called, she was the BJP’s candidate against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
It was not an election anyone expected her to win, but her energetic campaign brought her further into the limelight – she was appointed an official spokesperson for the party in Delhi and in 2020, she became a “national spokesperson” for the BJP.
Early life and education
Nupur Sharma was born in New Delhi in 1985. Sharma joined the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Sangh Parivar, as a student of Delhi University. She won the presidentship of the students union in 2008. A notable incident during her stint was the leading of an ABVP mob to heckle S. A. R. Geelani in a faculty seminar on ‘Communalism, Fascism and Democracy: Rhetoric and Reality’. She appeared on a television show later that night and gave brash responses. She graduated from the Hindu College at Delhi University with at Bachelor of Arts in economics and she later completed her Bachelor of Laws at Delhi University. After receiving a Master of Laws degree at the London School of Economics, Sharma became a lawyer.
Nupur Sharma Political career
Sharma became a worker of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and is said to have worked with senior leaders like Arvind Pradhan, Arun Jaitley and Amit Shah. In 2015, at age 30, she was given the ticket for contesting against Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the 2015 Delhi Legislative Assembly election. She lost the contest by 31,000 votes.
Afterwards, she was appointed as an official spokesperson for the BJP’s Delhi unit under Manoj Tiwari. In 2020, she was appointed as a national spokesperson of BJP under the presidentship of J. P. Nadda. According to a Delhi BJP leader, even when she was part of the Delhi unit, she was often sent out for TV debates on national issues because of her legal acumen, sound knowledge of national issues, and bilingual skills. She was seen as young, energetic and brash, with regular appearances on television debates.
— Nupur Sharma (@NupurSharmaBJP) June 5, 2022
— Nupur Sharma (@NupurSharmaBJP) June 5, 2022
Never give in to Islamic terrorists like Al-Qaida, they represent barbarism. The whole Indian nation should rally around #napursharma now and support her. Al Qaida and the Taliban put me on the their hitlist years ago. One lesson: never bow for terrorists. Never! https://t.co/4re4y0Wm2k
— Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) June 8, 2022
I request all media houses and everybody else not to make my address public. There is a security threat to my family.
— Nupur Sharma (@NupurSharmaBJP) June 5, 2022
Source: Wikipedia and BBC
