Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in an interview with regional newspaper Ananda Bazaar Patrika, on Wednesday said that incidents such as the lynching of a 50-year-old Muslim man in Dadri and the controversy surrounding the concert of Pakistani Ghazal singer Ghulam Ali were ‘sad’, but sought to make it clear that the Centre should not be blamed for such incidents.
The Dadri incident and the opposition to Pakistani singer Ghulam Ali’s concert are saddening, but what is the Centre’s role in these?
— PM Modi to Ananda Bazaar Patrika
This is the first time that the prime minister has broken his silence on Akhlaq’s horrific lynching over rumours of storing and consuming beef.
In the aftermath of the Dadri episode, many had questioned Modi’s silence. He had also not spoken a word on the cancellation of the Mumbai concert of Ghulam Ali after protests by the BJP’s ally in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena. Several political leaders, including Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal, had capitalised on the situation by inviting Ghulam Ali to their respective states for a concert.
The prime minister also hit back at opposition leaders who have, for days now, been accusing him of an unusual silence on incidents of rising intolerance in India – the Dadri killing, MM Kalburgi’s murder, the cancellation of Gulam Ali’s concert and the Shiv Sena’s protest over the book launch by Pakistan’s former Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri.
BJP has never supported incidents like these. It is the opposition that is accusing BJP of being communal, but in doing so, are they not practising politics of polarisation?
“This type of debate has also emerged in the past. BJP has always protested against this type of pseudo-secularism. However, facing this kind of social evil today, these debates have cropped up again. With discussions this debate can be settled,” he added.
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