Bhopal: BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate from Bhopal Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur on Thursday kicked up a major row by describing Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse as a “deshbhakt” (patriot), a comment which her party immediately condemned.
‘‘Godse was a ‘deshbhakt’, is a ‘deshbhakt’ and will remain a ‘deshbhakt’. People calling him a terrorist should instead look within. Such people will be given a befitting reply in these elections,” Pragya told reporters in Bhopal.
She was commenting on the recent remarks of actor and MNM President Kamal Haasan who called Godse the first Hindu extremist of Independent India. “The first extremist post-Independence was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu. It started from there. He killed Mahatma Gandhi,” Haasan had said.
Clearly unhappy with Thakur’s controversial comment in midst of elections, the BJP immediately condemned it. “We completely disagree with the statement she has made with regard to Mahatma Gandhi and we strongly condemn it. The BJP will ask her why she made such a statement.
It would be proper for her to tender a public apology for this objectionable statement,” BJP spokesperson G.V.L. Narsimha Rao told reporters at the party headquarters in Delhi. Back to the wall, Pragya later claimed that she would “follow the party’s line” and the party’s line was her line. But she stopped short of tendering an apology.
Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi attacked the BJP, saying just disowning the egregious comment was not enough; Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala called it an “insult to the country” and said “India’s soul is under attack from the successors of Nathuram Godse — the BJP ruling dispensation.”
Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, who is pitted against Thakur in Bhopal, termed her comment as “sedition” and demanded an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah.
It is not the first controversy that Thakur has been embroiled in. She had earlier said that Maharashtra ATS officer Hemant Karkare, who had interrogated her in the Malegaon case and was later killed during the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, had died due to her “curse.”
