New Delhi: Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Monday took a dig at Rahul Gandhi and Digvijay Singh, saying fear of backlash has prompted “majority bashers” to proclaim themselves as “proud” Hindus.
“Elections, after all, are a convenient season for all the neo-converts,” the senior BJP leader said stressing that aspirational middle-class, which is religiously inclined without being communal, will not accept “majority bashing” as the definition of secularism. During polls, even atheist are wearing their religion and caste on their sleeves, he said.
Without getting into the larger issue of whether a person can inherit his grandmother’s caste, the Congress has suddenly decided to proclaim its president Rahul Gandhi as “janeu-dhari brahmin”, Mr Jaitley said.
“He has now been declared as ‘Shiv bhakt’. He does not miss an opportunity to visit temples and makes an event out of each such programmes. His religious orientation was not visible in either 2004, 2009 or 2014,” he said.
Parties such as the Congress, BSP, SP and TMC have accused the ruling BJP-led NDA of communalising the elections to seek votes. They have also accused the BJP of sidelining key issues like unemployment and farm distress in the name on nationalism.
In a blog post, titled “A Convenient Season for Being a ‘Proud Hindu’”, he added that Digvijay Singh, the Congress candidate from Bhopal, is a well-known majority basher.
Mr Singh, Mr Jaitley said, had claimed that the Batla House encounter during the UPA government was a fake one and carried on a campaign in support of the terrorists and against the security forces.
“He even visited Azamgarh to meet the relatives of the deceased or arrested terrorists. He holds the patent for manufacturing the theory of “Hindu terror”.
