Battling outrage over “religious intolerance”, the ruling BJP faced further charges on Wednesday when party MP from Gorakhpur Yogi Adityanath compared superstar Shahrukh Khan with 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Sayeed for stating that there existed “extreme intolerance” in India.

The episode follows severe criticism over a BJP member’s remark that the Karnataka Chief Minister Siddharamaiah should be “beheaded” for asserting that he will eat beef. The ruling dispensation is also facing strong attacks from artistes, intellectuals and academics, who have been returning national awards protesting the government’s inability to check rising incidents of religious intolerance.

A day after the superstar was advised to “migrate to Pakistan” by BJP General Secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, who retracted his statement following a wave of protests on the social media, Adityanath took it upon himself to liken the popular actor to a Pakistani terrorist.

“If the majority community does not go to watch his films, he would be roaming the streets like any other common Muslim. These actors, so-called writers and artistes are part of an international conspiracy to defame India,” said the BJP MP, endorsing his party General Secretary’s view that Shahrukh should indeed “go back to Pakistan”.

BJP raps its leaders Meanwhile, Vijayvargiya who had asserted on Tuesday that “Shahrukh Khan lives in India but his heart is in Pakistan”, changed his tone after his statement was condemned by senior party leaders including Union Ministers Prakash Javdekar and M Venkaiah Naidu who said such comments are not endorsed by the party. Naidu was also critical of the statement against the Karnataka Chief Minister.

“Nobody should speak such nonsense. The statement made by one of the local functionaries in Karnataka is totally condemnable if he has made such remarks as per the media report. The party also does not approve of the comments made by a functionary against Shahrukh Khan,” Naidu said here.

Widespread criticism The lynching of a Muslim man over accusations of consuming beef and a spurt of hate speeches by leaders of the BJP and its affiliated organisations have spurred expressions of concern not just from captains of Indian industry such as Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and NR Narayana Murthy but invited international criticism.

An editorial in the New York Times on Wednesday said: “The plain truth is that India is being rived by hatred and held hostage to the intolerant demands of some Hindu hard-liners. This is not the India a vast majority of Indian citizens want and it is not an India that will attract the foreign investment that Mr Modi has worked hard to drum up on his many trips abroad.”

Related Topics