It is the old hobbit of the Congress MP Rahul Gandhi who is notorious for his communication blunders, to make a remark without having full knowledge of it. While saying he had read the Bhagavad, Gandhi added that, there is nothing Hindu about what the BJP does—absolutely nothing.

 

 

The former Congress president, who is currently on a week-long Europe tour, passed this remark while sharing a stage with Hinduphobic author Christophe Jaffrelot, who has written against India, Indian courts, BJP, PM Modi, and was part of the ‘Dismantling Hindutva’ event.

 

During the interaction, a student said that in many of his interactions, he had found that many of his friends and relatives have been affected by ‘Hindu nationalist’ rhetoric. Afterwards, he posed a question to Rahul Gandhi asking him what the stand of the coalition government would be vis-a-vis Hinduism in the ‘Post-BJP’ era.

 

Answering this, the Congress leader claimed that no Hindu book, seemingly for political subtleties revered religious books just become ordinary Hindu books, talk about ‘terrorising’ or oppressing the weak. He also argued that the BJP has nothing to do with Hindus and their acts have no Hinduness.

 

 

 

Congress MP Rahul Gandhi said that he has read the Bhagavad Gita and a number of the Upanishads. “I have read the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads and other Hindu scriptures. And I can say that there is nothing Hindu about what the BJP does, there is absolutely nothing. I have not read anywhere, in no Hindu book, or heard from any learned Hindu person that you should terrorise, or harm people who are weaker than you. So, this idea, this word, Hindu nationalists, this is a wrong word. They’re not Hindu nationalists. They have nothing to do with Hinduism. They are out to get power at any cost, and they will do anything to get power… They want dominance of a few people and that is what they are about. There is nothing Hindu about them,” Gandhi said.

 

 

 

 

“It is a matter of shame for India to have minorities that feel uncomfortable in their own country. If there are 200 million people who feel uncomfortable in India, if people from the Sikh community feel so uncomfortable, and women feel so uncomfortable, it is a matter of shame for us. That needs to be corrected,” Gandhi added.

 

When asked to comment on the India-Bharat row, Rahul said that he did not mind if the country was called India or Bharat, but stressed that the BJP’s intention behind the name change was rather out of irritation as the Opposition alliance was also named INDIA.

 

Reacting to this, BJP Leader Tejasvi Surya, slammed Rahul Gandhi. He said, "The very fact that Rahul Gandhi thinks that Hinduism is practised by referring to ‘books’ shows how shallow his understanding of our dharma is. That he has been reduced to crying before a handful of people in some faraway European city while Bharat is achieving global consensus at G20 is telling of how the nation has rejected his brand of politics in the last decade."