TIL Desk/National/Patna/ Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday criticised the election strategy adopted by the Congress in Gujarat and said the party was “veering towards extremism”.
The talks of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi being a “janeu-dhari Hindu” (one who wears the sacred thread) and the deliberate sidelining of top leaders like Ahmed Patel indicate a worrying trend in the grand old party, Kumar told reporters on the sidelines of his weekly ‘Lok Samvad’ programme.
“These trends show the party is veering towards extremism in its quest for votes. This is something it has always accused the BJP of,” he said. The Congress has claimed that Gandhi was a “janeu-dhari Hindu” after a row erupted over the alleged listing of his name in the register for non-Hindus at the Somnath temple in Gujarat.
Kumar took exception to the use of the term “janeu-dhari”, saying the sacred thread was a mark of “caste-based inequality, which socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan had once refused to wear and had also asked his followers to discard. “By proudly flaunting janeu, the party has unwittingly alienated a large section of the society which has been at the receiving end of the rigid caste hierarchy,” Kumar alleged.
