This refers to the editorial, “Owaisi's new nonsense” (March 17). All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi's utterance that he will not say ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’ is not new. He, along with his younger brother, wants to make headlines, to garner Muslim votes. However, the takers of such shenanigans are not beyond the parochial boundaries of Hyderabad, and this was proved in the Bihar Assembly election where his party drew a blank. It cannot be understood as to what wrong had Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat committed when he spoke about the need for patriotic slogans to be inculcated in the minds of the young.
Noted film personality Javed Akhtar, in his farewell speech in the Rajya Sabha, has rightly lambasted Owaisi. No one has ever seen god, yet we worship him. In the same pattern, while our national anthem is being sung, each and every person stands up as a mark of respect, though nothing in this regard has been mentioned in the Constitution.