Speaking at a rally in Jharkhand on Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that those setting fires and damaging property can be seen on TV and "identified by the clothes they are wearing". He was referring to the recent slew of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
On Tuesday, West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, criticised the comment.
"Can you recognise my dress? Is it bad?" Banerjee said pointing at her cotton saree before leading a huge march against the new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in Kolkata on Tuesday.
Banerjee, a vocal critic of the Act has vowed to not let NRC or CAA be implemented in the state.
""As long as I am alive, I will never implement the citizenship law or NRC in the state. You can very well dismiss my government or put me behind bars but I will never implement this black law. We will continue to protest democratically till this law is scrapped. If they want to implement it in Bengal, they will have to do it over my dead body," she had said on Monday.
Banerjee, the only chief minister to have gone the whole hog against the new citizenship law by protesting on the streets of Kolkata, vowed to block the implementation of CCA and the proposed NRC, and blamed "some powers from outside" the state for unabated vandalism.
On Tuesday, she added that the thought of categorising a political movement from the attire of participants has never crossed her mind.
She also brought a group of Trinamool workers and cultural personalities on the stage and repeated her comment by pointing at their attire.
One of them Bengali actor Sohom was wearing a cap.
"Is his dress bad?" Banerjee asked.
"Or is it whenever you see somebody with a cap you think only they (an apparent reference to Muslims) wear such an attire?"
Banerjee continued "Don't Punjabis wear headgear? Don't Christians wear long white robes? Dress, eating habits are personal choices."
Banerjee lambasted the BJP for its "divisive policies". "They sometimes say they will build a temple, or destroy a mosque. Sometimes they talk of driving out Muslims, sometimes they say they will withdraw Anglo-Indian reservation in Parliament. They break statues of Ambedkar.
"Anybody who opposes the BJP or protests against it is dubbed an anti-national. Now they are torturing students of Jamia Millia Islamia," she said.
Banerjee urged those protesting against the CAA in Bengal to eschew violence and cautioned them that the BJP was "hatching conspiracies" and using its guile to break the movement.
"They are deploying people who are setting fire and fleeing. Hand over such people to the police after dousing the fire," she said, with Trinamool Congress actress MPs Nusrat Jahan and Mimi Chakraborty by her side.
Banerjee said the Trinamool, in contrast, would launch "disciplined and peaceful" movement. Stressing on communal harmony during such protests, she said a strong democratic movement can take place only when the majority supports the minority and vice versa. "if your house is on fire, both Ram and Rahim will feel the heat". She said that her party's sole slogan for the movement was "No NRC, No CAB".
(With inputs from agencies)
