Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah on Monday attacked Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for his stand on the Jawaharlal Nehru University controversy and alleged that Rahul is unable to draw the distinction between pro-national and anti-national activities.
Declaring that no anti-national activities would be allowed in the country, Shah said in a blog: “No citizen can accept that a terrorist is favoured and anti-India slogans raised at a prestigious university of the country. But the kind of statements that Rahul Gandhi and his party colleagues have delivered at the campus proves that there is no place for national interest in their thinking.”
JNU has been in the eye of a storm following the arrest of its students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar on sedition charges after some students organised a meet to mark the anniversaries of the executions of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru and Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front co-founder Maqbool Bhat. Anti-India slogans were raised at the gathering. Subsequently, Delhi Police last week registered a sedition case and arrested Kanhaiya Kumar.
“Rahul Gandhi is unable to draw the distinction between pro-national and anti-national activities. The unfortunate incident at JNU cannot be condoned and considered pro-national by any stretch of imagination. The anti-India sloganeering and open support for terrorists at India’s premier university cannot be accepted by any citizen of this country. To top it, the statements given by Rahul Gandhi and other Congress leaders in JNU amply demonstrates yet again that they have no regard and love for the nation and its interests,” he said in the blog.
The BJP president asked Gandhi whether his support for anti-national slogans means that he has joined hands with the separatists. “Does he want to give a free hand to separatists in the name of freedom of expression and want another division of the country?” he asked.
Terming the incident at JNU nothing but a conspiracy to turn this premier institution of the country into a hotbed for separatism and terrorism and bring it a bad name, Shah said: “During his visit to the JNU campus, Rahul Gandhi compared the current government at the Centre with Hitler’s Germany. Before leveling such a ridiculous charge, Rahul Gandhi perhaps forgot that the only period in post-Independent India when a comparison can be drawn with Hitler’s rule was during Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s imposition of emergency in 1975.”