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The Lok Sabha was adjourned thrice on Monday after the Opposition created noisy scenes over BJP leader and former Rajya Sabha MP, Tarun Vijay’s purported “hurtful” and “racial” remarks on South Indians on a foreign TV channel. The government assured the House that no discrimination would be allowed based on caste, creed or colour.
The Congress and CPI(M), which trooped to the Well of the House, shouted slogans seeking stringent action against Vijay, including registration of an FIR under Article 15 of the Constitution, which prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.
Seeking to calm down the Opposition, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said: “India is a secular country,” adding that Vijay had already said his remark was “indefensible” and had “sincerely apologised”, adding that the BJP leader had also said “he was an adopted son of a Tamil mother.” An unrelenting Opposition, however, accused the Home Minister of “defending” Vijay, forcing the Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to comment: “This is not a court.”
Attacking the ruling party over the remarks, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge wondered whether the people from South India were not Indian citizens.
“I want to know whether we are Indians or not... Are we not citizens (of India),” Kharge said during Zero Hour, adding that Vijay was “not an ordinary person”, but a former Rajya Sabha member, ex-editor of RSS magazine Panchjanya , had written many books on BJP philosophy, writes columns in 22 newspapers.
He said Vijay’s remarks were a “threat” to the unity of the country, adding that if such things go on, then states would start asserting for independence. He cited B.R. Ambedkar, who said in 1949, that “If we continue such things (discrimination), one day we will lose our freedom.”
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar also intervened to assure the House that “We are all one. The country is one.”
However, the ruckus continued, leading to three adjournments.
Commenting on the alleged racist attacks on Nigerians on a TV channel recently, Vijay had said that Indians could not be racist because “we lived with black people” who were “all around us”, referring to people from the four southern states. The former MP later apologised on Twitter, saying it was a “badly framed sentence.”
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