Amid the controversy at the recently-held Dharam Sansad in Haridwar, which came under fire from multiple quarters for alleged hate speech, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor shared a two-year-old post comparing Hinduism and Hindutva, saying that they are not equal and that his message is "still relevant."
"The opposite of Hinduism is not Islam. It is not Christianity. It is not Socialism. It is Hindutva," the post reads.
The post says that while Hinduism is a great union of various Indian cultures and traditions with diverse roots and no founder, Hindutva is a homogenous racial-territorial category propagated by Savarkar. It also said that Hinduism is thousands of years old and Hindutva was first proposed as a political idea in 1923. "Hinduism has many central texts like the Vedas and Puranas, while Hindutva has one central political pamphlet, 'Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?' published in 1928," the post reads.
In one of the videos from the Haridwar event, a seer was heard saying that he would have followed Godse and "pumped six bullets in the chest of Manmohan Singh (former prime minister) when he had said that the minorities had the first right over natioanal resources".
Recently, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that those who bow before money are the ones who follow Hindutva.
"Those who believe in the ideology of Hindutva bow before anyone -- they bowed before the British and they bow before money because there is no truth in their hearts," Gandhi said in a virtual address to a Congress training camp organised by the Rajasthan unit of the party.
A group of lawyers, including senior advocates recently asked the Chief Justice of India N V Ramana to take suo motu cognisance against those who made "hate speeches" calling for "genocide of Muslims in order to achieve ethnic cleansing."
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