Whosoever sows hatred is terrorist: Digvijaya

NEW DELHI: Congress on Friday renewed its attack on BJP and RSS over terrorism. Pointing to the recent revelations of alleged involvement of RSS leader Indresh Kumar in the Samjhauta Express blast, Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh blamed BJP leader LK Advani’s 1992 rath yatra for sowing the seeds of terrorism in the Hindi heartland.

Speaking at a day-long seminar at the Constitution Club, Singh said, “extreme forms of communalism create hatred and hatred creates terrorism... Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi is an old issue, but the Sangh Parivar picked it up in 1985 to create disharmony. It was LK Advani’s rath yatra that sowed the seeds of terror in the Hindi heartland.”

Singh later added: “Whosoever sows seeds of hatred is a terrorist. It is easy to ban an outfit, but it is more important to fight the ideology and take that battle to the people and tell them what a danger the nation is in. All of us should resolve to fight against extreme communalism of all types. Why was Gandhiji killed? Because he was secular. We were always against the ideology that Godse endorsed. Today, we are faced with the same situation.”

Referring to the recent Ekta Yatra of BJP, he said: “They want to build a temple where there is a conflict. They want to hoist a flag wherever there is a conflict. They will not try to hoist it on their homes or at RSS headquarters. We should oppose this.”

Talking on the two-nation theory, which was the basis for the Partition of India and creation of Pakistan, Singh said, “The father of the two-nation theory was not Mohammed Ali Jinnah but Hindutva ideologue Veer Savarkar (the founder of RSS).”

Divijaya’s stand was supported by CPM, which has been over the past few months supporting BJP’s war against the Congressled UPA Government over spectrum allocation issue.

“The violent strain in Hindutva is very old. The two-nation theory as reminded to us by Digvijaya Singh was propounded by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who also spoke about militarising Hindu ‘dharma’ and ‘Hinduising’ all politics," CPM leader Sitaram Yechury said at the conference.

Yechury also said, “the ideology of Sangh Parivar needs to change. We will take up the issue in Parliament. Digvijaya rightly said that the two-nation theory was given by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar."