‘AIMIM, BJP feed upon each other’s divisive agenda’

Condemning blatant efforts at pitching one community against the other by creating a controversy over the slogan “Bharat Mata ki Jai”, the Congress party on Wednesday charged the AIMIM and BJP with feeding upon each other’s divisive and polarising agendas.

“Be it Owaisi brothers or Giriraj Singh, or Sakshi Maharaj (BJP), or Azam Khan (SP), or BSP’s Shafiq-ur-Rehman Burq, etc., they do complementary hate-mongering to further the agenda of polarisation,” said Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi. He added, “Be it a public exhortation to not say ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ and ‘Vande Mataram’ or calls for non-Modi voters to be sent to Pakistan, people pushing such thoughts, they do it singularly with the aim of spreading propaganda that suits their political purpose.”

“Be it in the elections of Maharashtra, Bangalore Municipal Elections or Bihar, the tacit and symbiotic inter-dependability between the BJP and the AIMIM has been there for everyone to see,” he said.

While explaining that “Bharat Mata ki Jai”, “Jai Hind” and “Vande Mataram” are not verses emanating from any scripture, rule book or statute manual, Mr Singhvi said these are slogans that emanated out of “our national conscience during the freedom struggle and are articulations of our intrinsic feeling towards India — the motherland, madar-e-watan, matrabhoomi”.

And the most apt description of “Bharat Mata ki Jai” is found in Jawaharlal Nehru’s book The Discovery of India, he said. Mr Singhvi that these are long-standing expressions of “our commitment to the concept of India as a nation and resonate voluntarily sans any coercion in the hearts and minds of every Indian”.