Togadia remarks: Singhal stops short of apology

Asked to state if he endorsed the remarks, Singhal said, ‘‘I will not comment on this.’’ He, however, ruled out any apology for the remark ‘‘unless the Congress apologises for having called us names for decades.’’

When asked to exemplify, he explained that VHP members had been called rapists and murderers. They had been charged with rape after an attack on a Christian establishment in MP’s Jhabua district.

The VHP had been often charged with murder of Mahatma Gandhi even though the RSS had nothing to do with it. ‘‘Apologise to us for this first, then we will think,’’ he said.

The VHP leader ridiculed attacks by Congress members on VHP offices at various places and pointed out that jehadi elements could do some mischief in the garb of Congress protestors. ‘‘If anything happens to Togadia, who would be responsible for it? Anything can happen in this country.’’

Singhal claimed that the dog imagery was introduced into public life by former Congress chief Rajiv Gandhi who had said: ‘‘‘I can not answer every barking dog in this country.’ Let the Congress apologise for this.’’

The VHP leader said that Congress workers were ‘‘giving birth to a dangerous culture’’ by indulging in violence. He claimed Sonia Gandhi’s personal assistant Vincent George was exhorting people over phone to go to VHP offices.