India's governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday asked the main opposition party Congress to not preach "Raj Dharma" (Ideals of Governance) to the government, after itself stooping low by using vote-bank politics.
The Sanskrit expression, Raj Dharma, talks of maintaining a sense of impartial conduct and accountability of rulers towards their subjects.
BJP's reaction comes a day after Congress leader Sonia Gandhi attempted to school the Narendra Modi-led government on "Raj Dharma" on Thursday over the communal riots in Delhi that have left 42 dead and over 300 others injured.
Senior BJP politician and India's Law Minister Ravishankar Prasad on Friday said Congress’ own record has been full of “twists and turns” for the sake of politics.
Alleging that Congress is playing politics even on the communal flare-up in Delhi at a time when one needs to talk about peace, Prasad said: “Please do not teach us Raj Dharma as your own record is full of twists and turns for simple political reasons. BJP condemns in strongest possible words the pure politicking by the Congress party on such a sensitive issue".
Prasad also said that Congress politicians like Priyanka Gandhi are delivering inflammatory speeches to stoke trouble in the national capital.
Sunday evening's clashes between two groups over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in northeastern Delhi took a communal turn by Monday and subsequently continued for two more days, leaving 42 people dead and over 250 injured.
On Thursday, Congress’s working president Sonia Gandhi in a memorandum to Indian President Ramnath Kovind demanded removal of the country's Home Minister Amit Shah due to the “dereliction of his constitutional duties”. It was after the meeting with the president that Sonia Gandhi chose to remind the BJP of its duty and principles of governance.
For over two months, several parts of not just Delhi but the country have witnessed demonstrations and violent clashes over the recently amended contentious citizenship law or the CAA. The law is related to immigrants and not current Indian citizens, the government has clarified.
The law offers citizenship to persecuted minorities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, leaving out Muslims and including only Hindus, Parsis, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs.
Being far more than a casual Congress reference to "Raj Dharma" was essentially a reminder of what stalwart BJP leader and former Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had once said to the present Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2002, who was then the state chief of Gujarat. Massive communal clashes had occurred in Gujarat, within one year of Modi taking over as state chief, killing 1,044 people (794 Muslims and 254 Hindus). A total of 223 went missing and 2,500 were injured.
Similarly, during Congress's tenure in Delhi in 1984, a total of 3,300 people were killed during the anti-Sikh riots following the assassination of Congress leader Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards.
