Reacting to a booklet containing objectionable content about Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the BJP on Friday dragged the Nehru-Gandhi family into controversy, advising the Congress to read Salman Rushdie's ‘Midnight's Children’ to know more about them.
The saffron party also said that during freedom struggle Congress leaders lived in comfort in prison and wrote books, but Savarkar faced torture in the Cellular Jail.
Congress-affiliated Seva Dal earlier this week distributed a Hindi book titled ‘Veer Savarkar, Kitne 'Veer'?’, at a training camp here.
The book questioned Savarkar's patriotism and claimed that he and Mahatma Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse were in a physical relationship, citing ‘Freedom at Midnight’ by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre.
BJP national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said Congress leaders should read Rushdie's "Midnight's Children". The novel, winner of the Booker Prize, contains references to Emergency, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi.