A war of words erupted between the BJP and the Opposition over Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s attack on his predecessor Sushil Kumar Shinde for having coined the term “Hindu terrorism” and thereby weakening India’s fight against terror.
While the Congress termed it a diversionary tactics even as it maintained Shinde had used it outside Parliament, BJP retaliated by recalling how Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi had in 2010 said radicalised Hindu groups might be bigger threat than the local support for terrorist group lashkar-e-Tayyeba.
Defending his party colleague, leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said the then Home Minister had not spoken about the issue in the Parliament but at a party forum and that the “NDA Home Minister is talking about it out of context”. Azad asserted that his party needed no lesson on terrorism from BJP and cited the sacrifice of former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, both of whom were killed by terrorists.
“The Home Minister has diverted attention from the issue. The reality is that this Government has totally failed in tackling terrorism in the country,” Azad said at the AICC media briefing. He also said that a comprehensive discussion should take place and the Prime Minister should share the outcome of his talks with leaders from foreign countries.
Azad was critical of the Narendra Modi dispensation for failing to tackle terrorism and Pakistan and claimed that ceasefire violations have increased by a large extent since it came to power. The Gurdaspur terror incident is the latest such attack, he said.
Former Home Minister P Chidambaran too accused the Centre of doing a “completely diversionary argument”. “The fact is that he was referring to Shinde who made a statement outside Parliament. He (Shinde) didn’t use the phrase Hindu terror in the manner Rajnath Singh quoted. He was referring to right-wing extremist groups who had been implicated and some of them charged in several bomb blast cases,” Chidambaram told a TV channel.
Singh, while making a statement in the lok Sabha on Gurdaspur terror attack had said the then Home Minister had coined the new term ‘Hindu terrorism’ in order to change the direction of probe. “It weakened our fight. Hafiz Saeed of Pakistan had congratulated the then Home Minister,” Singh said in his statement on Friday. Saeed, the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, is among India’s most wanted men and roams free in Pakistan, often making provocative anti-India speeches.
Shinde himself denied having used the word “Hindu terrorism” in Parliament during the UPA tenure. “I never used the word Hindu terrorism in Parliament. I had used it in the Jaipur session of Congress but I withdrew it immediately,” Shinde said replying to media on the sidelines of a function at Pune.
BJP leader and Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad hit back at Congress after Azad said the Home Minister was trying to polarise society and divert attention from the Government’s failures by raking up the issue of ‘Hindu terrorism’.
Prasad quoted a news report to claim that Rahul Gandhi in a 2010 conversation with the then US ambassador had said “there was evidence of some support for lashkar-e-Tayyeba among certain elements in India’s indigenous Muslim community, the bigger threat may be the growth of radicalised Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community”.
Terrorism had no religion and colour and BJP never uses the term ‘Muslim terror’ but ‘jehadi terror’, Prasad said, asking Congress president Sonia Gandhi to clarify on the her son’s comments. “Does she support his commentsIJ” Prasad asked.