Suspended Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar said that the two nation theory was first proposed by Hindu Mahasabha founder VD Savarkar.
Speaking at an event in Lahore on Monday, 7 May, Aiyar said that Savarkar “invented” Hindutva and divided people on religious lines.
His statement comes in the backdrop of a row over Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s portrait at the Aligarh Muslim University. According to ANI, the leader said:
Present situation in India is an abhorrent one. In 1923 a man called VD Savarkar invented a word which doesn’t exist in any religious text, ‘Hindutva’. So the first proponent of the two nation theory was the ideological guru of those who are currently in power in India.Mani Shankar Aiyar in Lahore
Earlier on 5 May, BJP President Amit Shah had taken to Twitter and spoke of Aiyar’s “admiration” for Tipu Sultan and Jinnah.
Responding to BJP slamming him, Aiyar said:
I referred to Jinnah as the Quaid e Azam and the hysterical Indian TV anchors are demanding to know how an Indian can go to Pakistan and say this. I know many Pakistanis who called MK Gandhi as Mahatma Gandhi, does that make them unpatriotic Pakistanis?
The Congress had then rejected the BJP's charge, voiced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi among others, and accused it of deliberately bringing Pakistan into the election discourse to polarise voters.
The former Congress leader was at the centre of a major controversy during the Gujarat Assembly election in 2017 when he reportedly invited Pakistani officials to dinner at his New Delhi residence.
Days after the controversy, Aiyar was suspended from primary membership of the party for having called Prime Minister Narendra Modi “neech aadmi,” on the campaign trail in Gujarat.
“He (Modi) is a ‘neech kism ka aadmi’ (a vile man) who has no ‘sabhyata’ (civility),” said Aiyar, who has often courted controversy with his off-the-cuff remarks.
After the rebuke by the Congress leadership, Aiyar was soon on national television proffering clarification, insisting it was because of his poor understanding of Hindi language that he used the word, and offered an apology.
(With inputs from ANI.)
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