Congress leader floats Bharatiya Hindu Parishad to counter Vishwa Hindu Parishad

BENGALURU: Rahul Gandhi might be confused on what to do to bring the Hindu back into the Congress fold. But a block unit president of the party in Puttur, one of the Hindutva hotspots in Congress-ruled Karnataka, has worked out a plan to counter the saffron onrush in the region which, he says, will be a soft Hindutva model for the party to replicate across the country.

Puttur, the former assembly constituency and home of Union Law Minister DV Sadananda Gowda, has long been a BJP bastion. The Congress managed to wrest it in 2013, by nominating a former BJP MLA and Gowda-follower, Shakuntala Shetty, as its candidate. Since then, the Congress has been trying all methods to ensure the very divided electorate remains with them.

The latest move is by the block Congress president Hemanth Shetty, who has decided to float an organisation called Bharatiya Hindu Parishad (BHP). “Hindu has come to mean BJP, Hindutva and the Sangh Parivar. But that is not true. I am in the Congress and I am a proud Hindu. These people have distorted the meaning of the religion and are using it for their political ends. My organisation is going to counter it,” Shetty told ET over phone from Puttur.

The new organisation, whose similarity in name to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad is not accidental, is officially not a wing of the Congress.