Raising the political temperature ahead of Assembly polls in five States, the BJP on Thursday sought to turn the tables on the Congress for comparing “the Hindu community with Jehadi groups like ISIS and Boko Haram”.
The BJP launched a no-holds-barred attack after senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid’s said comparison in his new book, “Sunrise Over Ayodhya: Nationhood in Our Times’’ stirred a controversy. He also maintained “the robust version of Hindutva” has taken the centre stage in the country.
The BJP asked Congress president Sonia Gandhi whether she would break her silence and tell “whether her party considers Hindus as fundamentalists” and echo Congressmen like P Chidambaram and Shusil Kumar Shinde “who called Hindus as terrorists”.
The controversy generated over the passage of the senior Congressman’s book that read, “Sanatan Dharma and classical Hinduism known to sages and saints were being pushed aside by a robust version of Hindutva, by all standards a political version similar to the jehadist Islam of groups like ISIS and Boko Haram...”
The BJP demanded the “sacking” of Khurshid from the Congress for his defamatory comments.
Addressing a Press conference, BJP leader and party’s spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia lashed-out at Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra, besides Sonia, and wondered whether the two “ ichhadhari Hindus who ahead of elections in UP are currently visiting each corner of each street of the State “ will have the courage to say that Hindus are comparable with ISIS and Boko Haram..”
Condemning Khurshid’s remarks, Bhatia stated that his words hurt not only Hindus, but “the soul of India”.
He said it is the same Khurshid who when asked about the forced exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Kashmir valley had retorted “ho gaya to ho gaya..ham kya Karen..! “. Bhatia said it is a reply like that of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s aide Sam Pitroda when he was similarly quizzed about the 1984 Sikh riots during the Congress regime.
BJP spokesperson questioned if the statements in Khurshid’s book were thoughts and remarks by senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Iyer who is often seen as “Pakistan sympathiser” by the BJP leaders.
“This is the mentality of the Congress party. This is all done on the orders of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. Earlier, they had mentioned ‘Hindu terror,” Bhatia said.
Charging the Congress with indulging in the Communal politics and “spreading hate against the majority community”, he hit-out at it and accused it of ‘dividing the country’.
“The Governments of the Congress party, which remained in the country for 55 years after independence, have only done communal politics. How to divide the society, how to spread poison in the society, how to do Hindu-Muslim politics, Congress has done just this,” he alleged.
“Why aren’t such Congress leaders expelled from the party’ You can be the opposition but you cannot be an enemy of the Hindus. Congress party is weaving a web of hatred against Hindus like a spider,” Bhatia added.
Accusing the 68-year-old Congress leader and the lawyer of comparing “Hindutva” with radical Islamic terror groups and playing “communal politics” to get Muslim votes ahead of polls.
“Due to the politics of hatred of Congress, the public will teach a lesson in the Assembly elections to be held in 5 States next year,” said the BJP spokesperson.
Highlighting the paragraph in Khurshid’s book, the BJP’s IT cell chief Amit Malviya tweeted “Congress’s Salman Khurshid in his new book writes that Hindutva is similar to the jihadist Islamist groups like ISIS and Biko Haram. What else can we expect from someone whose party coined the term Saffron terror just to draw equivalence with Islamic jihad, to get Muslim votes?” he said.
A complaint has also been filed an advocate Vineet Jindal saying statement is “stirring enraged emotions among the Hindu religion followers “.
Calling it a “misuse” of the constitutional right to free speech, Jindal’s complaint read: “The contents of the statement made by the accused, claim Hinduism to be equivalent to ISIS and Boko haram, which are terrorist groups. It is a quite aggravating and defamatory statement for the whole Hindu community and also questions their values and virtues about a society.”