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| Instead of withdrawing controversial remarks, Cong continues to attack RSS-BJP | | Nationalism or 'Hindu Terror' | | RUSTAM
JAMMU, Feb 3 : Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde on January 20 accused the RSS and its political organ BJP of running "training camps where they promote what he termed as Hindu terror". He made this highly controversial and questionable statement at the AICC session/Chintan Shivir at Jaipur in the presence of over 300 Congress leaders, including AICC president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Stung by what was construed as a deliberate affront to their self-respect and an attack on the Hindu community, as also as a move to condone the Pakistani crimes, including deadly terror attacks in India, the BJP and the RSS denounced the Congress and Home Minister and termed the statement "unacceptable" and "irresponsible". They demanded an unconditional apology from the Prime Minister, the AICC president and the Union Home Minister, besides demanding Shinde's resignation. It was not only the RSS and the BJP which felt outraged by the Shinde's most irresponsible remarks, but bulk of the Hindu community as well as "secular" formations like BSP of Mayawati disapproved of Shinde's "wild" allegation. The BJP - apart from tearing into the Congress and its "worst form communal politics" and castigating Shinde - asked the UPA Government to "book and punish the BJP and the RSS leaders if what Shinde said was based on facts". The fact is that it was only Lashkar chief Hafiz Saeed, who, in collaboration with the Pakistani state, has been hatching conspiracies against India since years to break it into smithereens, who "congratulated" Shinde (read Congress) and demanded that India be declared as a "terrorist state".
Some had hoped that Shinde and the Congress top brass would reconsider their stand on the RSS and the BJP taking into consideration the impact of Shinde's statement on the "Hindu psyche", but it was not to be. It was perhaps its "vote-bank politics" or its "lust for Muslim votes" which did not allow it to ask Shinde to withdraw his statement or dissociate itself from his statement. On the contrary, minister after minister and senior Congress leaders defended Shinde and his statement and "shamelessly" asserted that Shinde was right. They took this line despite the fact that the BJP organized nationwide protests against Shinde and the Congress. Determined to avenge their disrespect, the BJP the other day announced that it will boycott Shinde both in and outside the Parliament, insist on his resignation and continue with its protests as long as the Prime Minister and the AICC president maintain silence over the issue and Shinde remains Home Minister. "Shinde has committed a grave crime. He has not acted like the country's Home Minister, but like a Pakistan agent," one of the senior BJP leaders and MP yesterday said.
As expected, the Congress responded negatively. Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari, who in 2008 had condemned the Amarnath land agitation in Jammu and elsewhere in the country as the brainchild of "Hindu fundamentalists" and not spoken a word against Kashmiri fanatics who had opposed the transfer of a small piece of land to the Amarnath Shrine Board on Saturday ridiculed the BJP and took potshots at it for deciding to boycott all public programmes of the Home Minister over his Hindu terror remarks, saying the main opposition party and its ideological parent, the RSS, would be better served if they introspect and take steps to see such individuals and such tendencies are really exercised from their own ethos. "I think it is far more important that the BJP and the RSS need to introspect and reflect as to why people who are allegedly involved in criminal activities or even activities which attract the attention of the laws and terror have either organizational or ideological links with the BJP or the RSS or its front organizations," he told reporters in Chandigarh, adding "So, rather than threatening to ''gherao'' the Home Minister, rather than threatening to boycott the Home Minister; they would be better served if they introspect and they take steps to see such individuals and such tendencies are really exercised from their own ethos". His statement was as irresponsible and provocative as that of Shinde, thus indicating their contempt for organizations like the RSS and the BJP, which by no stretch of imagination could be termed as terror organizations.
The RSS and the BJP just cannot be accused of causing terror attacks in India. Do they, like Pakistan and Pakistani terrorists, want to break and destroy India? They do not. They are nationalist to the core, notwithstanding the fact that the BJP diluted its ideology in 1999 to capture power at the centre. It is not proper for the Congress to stoop so low and pollute and communalize the situation in India for the sake of minority votes. Nation is nation and no one can be allowed to work against it. |
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