Remarks like Ghulam Nabi Azad’s “manifest in the atrocities and violence against Muslims in the country”, as evidenced by the “recent incident in Uttar Pradesh where the parents of a Muslim boy who had married a Hindu girl were lynched,” says PDP chief and former J&K chief minister
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI — Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti said Kashmir leader Ghulam Nabi Azad was facilitating the narrative of the RSS and the BJP.
She said Azad’s recent statement on Indian Muslims was highly divisive.
Former Union minister and state chief minister Azad had recently said that Muslims in India are there because of conversions from Hindus and in Kashmir, all Muslims were converted from Kashmiri Pandits.
Terming the claim of Azad “highly regrettable”, Mehbooba said in a statement from Srinagar that “it echoes the ideology and narrative of RSS BJP against the Muslims of the country”.
She said Azad’s remarks were “dangerous and divisive” and that they “resemble the language of the RSS, BJP and Jan Sangh”. Such remarks “manifest in the atrocities and violence against Muslims in the country”, as evidenced by the “recent incident in Uttar Pradesh where the parents of a Muslim boy who had married a Hindu girl were lynched”.
Muslims in India, she said, are “unsafe” because of this mindset. The government is supposed to build houses, but the BJP government is “busy demolishing them selectively, especially those that belong to Muslims”.
Referring to BJP’s criticism of the recent induction of Mushaal Malik in the interim ministry of Pakistan, Mehbooba said, “I am not an advocate of Mushaal Malik but she is not any terrorist or even a terror accused unlike her husband”.
Mushaal is the wife of Yaseen Malik who is a terrorism accused and is lodged in Tihar Jail and facing charges of killing four IAF officers in Kashmir.
“But in the BJP we have terror-accused people like Sadvhi Pragya Thakur who openly calls for genocide of Muslims and BJP is rewarding such people,” Mehbooba said.
“In the case of Mushaal, there is something to learn for the BJP-RSS regime that Pakistan is rewarding those they think are furthering their ideas on Jammu & Kashmir but unfortunately what our government does is to punish people who stood by and propagated the Idea of India in Jammu & Kashmir.
“Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Sahab being a case in point who the BJP wants to erase from history, nothing less can be said about Mufti Sahib who held the idea of India so dear to him,” she added.
