New Delhi: Union minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jailtey on Saturday asserted his party’s ‘Hindutva’ roots and said those parading their newfound Hindu piety were nothing but “clones”.
“BJP has always been seen as a pro-Hindutva party and if someone wants to mimic us, I do not have any complaint. But there is a basic principle in politics, if an original is available why would anyone prefer a clone?” Jailtey told mediapersons in Surat.
The finance minister’s barbed remarks were in response to Congress leader Kapil Sibal’s charge that Prime Minister Narendra Modi can no longer be called a Hindu as he had completely embraced fundamentalist ideology. It was also a sly dig at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who has been on a temple-visiting spree in Gujarat ahead of the assembly election later this month.
One such pilgrimage of Rahul’s sparked a massive furore in the last few days, after it was reported that the Congress leader’s name was allegedly listed as a ‘non-Hindu’ visitor at the famed Somnath Temple. The BJP fulminated against Rahul and asked him to come clean on his religious leanings, while the Congress, in damage control mode, proclaimed Rahul a devout ‘janeu dhaari Hindu’.
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This was buttressed by Rahul’s own assertion that he came from a family of ‘Shiv bhakts’, but chose not to discuss his faith publicly as it was a “personal” matter, a statement at odds with his recent streak of visiting 20-odd temples in poll-bound Gujarat over the last several weeks.
In light of the BJP sweeping the UP civic polls and the Congress party’s dismal show, Jaitley said the grand old party is on the cusp of extinction and will meet a bitter defeat in Gujarat, where the saffron party has ruled for the last 20 years.
