Mumbai : Having successfully set the cat among the pigeons, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Sunday made a half-hearted attempt to clarify his Saturday’s statement at a rally in Nashik that those who refuse to chant ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ have no right to live in India.
So, even as he tried to seemingly make amends and said that he had absolutely no problem if somebody said ‘Jai Hind’ or ‘Jai Bharat’ or ‘Jai Hindustan’, he held his ground and strongly objected to someone saying, ‘I won’t chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai.’ ‘‘There is a limit to appeasement too,” Fadnavis said, opening yet another festering sore. “These elements are divisive forces which want to create a rift in our country and wish to drive a wedge in our unity. Why should we tolerate it,” he reasoned.
Fadnavis, in his clarification, said that he had given a 50-minute long speech on Saturday in which he talked mostly about drought; as against this, he devoted just five minutes to the slogan ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ and the Shani Shingnapur temple issue. “The media picked up only the ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ quote and that too selectively. It clearly proves that a section of media is interested in creating a controversy,” he explained.
He also asserted that he had specifically said that ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ has nothing to do with religion. “It is not just about the slogan but it is about those lakhs of freedom fighters and soldiers who sacrifice their lives on the battlefield with this chant on their lips,” said Fadnavis.
The chief minister also said there was a plot to defame Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the issue of ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ and ‘Vande Mataram.’
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Nashik: Amid the raging debate over nationalism, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has said that those unwilling to say ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ have no right to stay in the country.
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The explanation notwithstanding, two leaders of different opposition parties on Sunday slammed Fadnavis’s statement and called it a ploy to divert attention from relevant issues.
“They keep coming up with such issues. First, it was ‘ghar wapsi’; then came ‘love ‘jihad’, which failed to deliver in the Bihar (assembly) elections. Then, the cow became an issue but it has backfired. Now, they have come up with this issue of ‘Bharat mata Ki Jai’,” Janata Dal United (JD-U) spokesman K.C. Tyagi told IANS. He also dubbed them as “pseudo-nationalists.”
Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Nilotpal Basu called it “tattoo-ism”. “Forcing others to chant ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ and making statements that those who don’t chant it should leave India is not patriotism; it is tattoo-ism. They want to flaunt it like a tattoo on their bodies,” Basu told IANS.
“They are pursuing poisonous politics. The constitution of India gives everyone the freedom to follow their respective faiths. Besides, article 1 of the constitution calls this country as ‘India’ first and Bharat later. So why should it be Bharat and not India?” Basu contended.
