You are invited to my wedding. You, and 100,000 others
Bride to be: Aparna Bisht
With a hundred thousand guests, next month’s six-day wedding between two of India’s most distinguished families makes Britain’s royal nuptials this year seem a rather modest affair.
The town of Safai, in Uttar Pradesh, will host enough wedding well-wishers to fill London’s O2 five times. It’s fair to say that anyone who is anyone will be there to celebrate the lavish marriage of Prateek Yadav, 23, and Aparna Bisht, 21.
Prateek’s father, Mulayam Singh Yadav, is the head of the Samajwadi (Socialist) Party, three times Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous region with 200 million citizens, an ex-defence minister of India and a political hero to millions around the country. Aparna’s father, Arvind Singh Bisht, is the editor of the Lucknow branch of The Times of India in Uttar Pradesh. The guest list is likely to read like a who’s who of Indian business, politics, religion and Bollywood.
“The royalty is getting married and it’s a big buzz here,” said Aparna, who is completing her masters in international politics at Manchester University. “We have been friends for eight years, so you can call us high-school sweethearts.” Prateek is a keen bodybuilder who did an MSc in management at Leeds University and now works in real estate.
The inter-caste marriage has attracted the attention of Indian commentators. “Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose main support base is among the Yadavs, is reaching out to the upper caste Rajputs,” Nora Chopra wrote in India’s Sunday Guardian. “The Yadav family hopes to reap the electoral fruits of this inter-caste marriage in the Assembly elections.”
The wedding, which opens on 2 December and concludes with a reception in Lucknow for 1,500 people on 7th, has taken six months to prepare. The wedding ceremony falls on the third day, when numbers will swell to 100,000, bringing Samajwadi supporters from all over India. Food will be distributed, as the streets are flooded with music and dancing.
Published in the Independent on Sunday
hardly a royality – Mulayam singh Yadav started without a penny and looted people’s enough money through corruption to throw a lavish wedding for his son. Sick fellow. And this girl has the gal to publish her wedding to the corrupt monster’s son.
That is not a very kind thing to say about any newly weds. Aparna is a member of the Rajput lineage of royal warriors, so yes, royalty.
A vast number of Indian politicians are subject to such allegations, without wanting to take sides or name names, I found the extravagant use of taxpayers money on certain vanity projects around UP incredibly surprising. One thing that can be said for sure about India, is that it is a democracy, ranked 40th out of 167 nations on the Economist’s Democracy Index, a long long way ahead of all of their neighbours and their neighbours neighbours.
The wedding was covered by almost every Indian media group there is, including the Week (India edition) and India Today, major titles not affiliated in any way with the Times Group for whom Mr Arvind Singh Bisht works. Similarly the Independent on Sunday is unaffiliated with the Times Group; this is a topic of serious public interest not a case of vanity publishing.
I also feel that if you can’t put your name to your comments, they will be consigned to the dustbin of vindictive, and ultimately worthless, drivel that clogs up so much the internet.
@k – It is very unfortunate to find an idiot like you under this article.
Georgebining,
“use of taxpayers money on certain vanity projects around UP incredibly surprising” — you have indicated yourself. And Georgebinning, unlike clinging on to its past briton, India eliminated kings and kingdom so o royalty here,
Georgebiing and SD Subba,
I condone any happy occasion or just the basic life of corrupt politicians – so there. There are way too many people affected by the corruption of politicians instead of condemning the corrupt people, celebrating their life or any occasion in their life – is equal to supporting corruption.
I am not the idiot here.
Regarding aparna bisht, she knows well enough the family she is getting married.