Choose Words Responsibly When Criticising BJP, Congress Advises Tharoor After 'Hindu Pak' Comment

New Delhi: A day after Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said that India will become a ‘Hindu Pakistan’ if BJP were to come to power in 2019, another Congressman advised him to realise party’s historic responsibility while “choosing words" to counter BJP.

In a series of tweets, Congress communication in-charge, Randeep Singh Surjewala said the grand old party represents India’s civilisational values of pluralism and diversity and urged Congress leaders to keep this in mind while rejecting BJP’s hatred.

Addressing an event in Thiruvananthapuram yesterday, Tharoor said that the BJP will write “a new Constitution" which will pave the way for a nation, much like Pakistan, where rights of minorities are not respected.

"If they (BJP) win a repeat in the Lok Sabha, our democratic Constitution as we understand will not survive as they will have all the elements they need to tear apart the Constitution of India and write a new one," news agency ANI quoted him as saying.

"That new one will be the one which will enshrine principles of ‘Hindu Rashtra’, that will remove equality for minorities, that'll create a Hindu Pakistan and that isn't what Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad and great heroes of freedom struggle fought for," Tharoor added.

"They already have more than 20 states under their belt, so a Rajya Sabha majority looks near," he said, adding, "Now, if they could muster what they managed during the last Lok Sabha polls, India is done for."

Meanwhile, criticising Tharoor's statement, the BJP demanded Congress president Rahul Gandhi's apology.

Speaking to ANI, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said, "Rahul Gandhi must apologise for what Shashi Tharoor said. The Congress was responsible for the creation of Pakistan because of its ambitions yet again. It has gone ahead to demean India and defame Hindus of India."

Patra also took to Twitter and said that the Congress doesn't lose any opportunity to demean India and defame Hindus.

According to a report in Manorama Online, the Congress leader further said that the stalwarts of the Sangh Parivar — VD Savarkar, the man who coined the term 'Hindutva'; MS Golwalkar, the longest-serving RSS chief, and Deendayal Upadhyay whom Prime Minister Narendra Modi looks up to — wanted the Indian Constitution “discarded".

“Their first argument was that it was full of Western ideas written by anglophone lawyers in the wrong language. This was in a way true, but we also know that both the English and Hindi drafts of the Constitution are considered authentic," Manorama quoted Tharoor as saying.

He said the biggest irony was that Narendra Modi, who had placed Savarkar's picture opposite Gandhiji's in Parliament, had called the Constitution his "holy book". "But then, is the Prime Minister willing to question what his idols said about the Constitution," he asked.

Standing by his statement, Tharoor said, “I have said this before and I will say it again. Pakistan was created as a state with a dominant religion, which discriminates against its minorities and denies them equal rights. India never accepted the logic that had partitioned the country. But the BJP/RSS idea of a Hindu Rashtra is the mirror image of Pakistan — a state with a dominant majority religion that seeks to put its minorities in a subordinate place. That would be a Hindu Pakistan, and it is not what our freedom movement fought for, nor the idea of India enshrined in our Constitution."