Advani ups the ante, wants PM to apologise

Hoping that the UPA Government’s affidavit on Ram Sethu will bring some political dividend, the BJP raised its stakes further with L K Advani demanding an apology from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi for “insulting Hindus”.

Hoping that the UPA Government’s affidavit on Ram Sethu will bring some political dividend, the BJP raised its stakes further with L K Advani demanding an apology from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi for “insulting Hindus”.

The BJP leader sought to know if the Congress could dare “this kind of insult to any other religion”. Training the guns on Sonia Gandhi, Advani said the PM was merely for name and the “smallest things done by the Government are with the approval of the UPA chairperson”.

Terming the UPA Government “anti-Hindu”, Advani warned the leadership of the Congress party and the Government of “massive” protest across the country “unless corrective action is taken immediately”.

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“With the UPA Government claiming in Supreme Court that Lord Ram did not exist and that the Ramayana has no historical basis, it is clear that the Congress party’s pseudo-secularism has degenerated into sadist-secularism. By filing this shocking affidavit before the country’s highest court in the ongoing dispute over the Sethusamudram Ship Canal Project near Tamil Nadu, the leadership of the Congress party and the UPA Government have poured contempt on the religious sentiments of crores of Hindus all over the world,” Advani said.

The BJP leader said it is “blasphemous and arrogant at worst, and insensitivity and recklessness at best,” for a Government claiming to be secular to trash the deepest and noblest sensibilities of the Hindus.

“In one stroke of its legal pen, the Government has sought to negate all that the Hindus consider sacred in their faith,” he said.

Advani said Ramayana, along with the Mahabharata, is considered the bedrock of India’s national culture and identity by all great leaders of India’s freedom movement from Mahatma Gandhi to Lokamanya Tilak. “By describing it as a pure myth and a work of fiction, the Government has wounded the very idea of India and sought to rewrite the civilisational identity of our ancient nation,” said Advani.

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The BJP leader, who was also the architect of the Ramjanmabhumi movement, said even critics did not question the existence of Ram, only his birthplace. “It is the present UPA Government, which is politically steered by Sonia Gandhi and only nominally headed by Manmohan Singh, that has the dubious distinction of telling the Supreme Court that Lord Ram was never born,” he said.

Advani said he has talked to AIADMK leader Jayalalitha on the issue and she supported the BJP position. BJP and AIADMK are inching towards an alliance in Tamil Nadu.

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