PITRODA SAYS SOUTH INDIANS LOOK LIKE AFRICANS, QUITS AFTER OUTRAGE

In the midst of a high-voltage Lok Sabha poll campaign, Congress leader Sam Pitroda once again handed enough ammunition to the BJP with his analogy depicting India's diversity. Slamming his comments as "racist", Prime Minister Narendra Modi pounced on Pitroda's comment to hit out at the grand old party and asserted that people will not tolerate attempts to insult them based on their skin colour.

Later Pitroda was forced to resign as the chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress after his controversial remarks as the INDIA Bloc leaders too disapproved of his 'racist' comments. Congress chief spokesman Jairam Ramesh said party chief Mallikarjun Kharge has accepted Pitroda's decision.

At his rallies in Telangana, Modi said he is livid with the racial profiling of Indians by the US-based "philosopher and uncle of shehzada (Rahul Gandhi)", and linked the Congress's opposition to Droupadi Murmu's presidential bid to its mindset, which saw her as an "African" because of the colour of her skin.

"I am very angry today. I do not get angry if someone abuses me. Today, the philosopher of 'shehzada' (prince) has inflicted such a big abuse that I am full of anger. Will people's abilities in our country be decided by the colour of their skin? Who has allowed the shehzada to play this game of skin?" Modi said.

As Pitroda's remarks went viral and triggered a political firestorm, the Congress once again in a weeks' time distanced itself from its overseas wing chairperson's remarks and even criticised those as "most unfortunate and unacceptable".

The BJP dismissed the Congress's stand as meaningless as it cited Pitroda's close association with the Gandhi family and launched a blistering attack.

Pitroda's comments at a podcast landed his party in yet another soup, soon after his reference to inheritance tax in the United States as an "interesting law" while discussing the Congress's Lok Sabha poll manifesto gave the ruling BJP a potent handle to accuse the opposition party of eying citizens' assets as part of its "redistribution of wealth" policy.

Pitroda, an advisor to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, said, "We have survived 75 years in a very happy environment where people could live together, leaving aside a few fights here and there. We could hold the country as diverse as India together. Where people in the east look like the Chinese, people in the west look like the Arabs, people in the north look like, maybe, white and people in the south look like Africans."

"It does not matter. All of us are brothers and sisters. We respect different languages, different religions, different customs, different food," Pitroda said in the interview that was widely circulated on social media.

As a row erupted, Congress chief spokesman Jairam Ramesh said the analogies drawn by Pitroda to illustrate India's diversity are most unfortunate and unacceptable. The Indian National Congress completely dissociates itself from these analogies."

The BJP dismissed the Congress's disassociation with the controversial comments as it noted at a press conference that Pitroda has a history of making "insulting and demeaning" comments, including on terrorism and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

His "hua to hua" (so what) reaction to a question on the 1984 communal violence and "it happens all the time" reference to the Pulwama terror attack, both in 2019 as the country was gearing up for the general election, had also created massive rows, while his party had sought to distance itself from those.