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With the election season in the country underway, Nalin Kohli, one of the prominent spokespersons of the BJP recently said that BJP President Amit Shah calling Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh “termites” and “infiltrators” was a “perfectly apt analogy”.
Speaking to Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan on the show UpFront, Kohli remarked, “A termite, essentially, and in India, we’re used to it because we do have a lot of termites, they come from the ground and they eat you up hollow from the inside… it’s a perfectly apt analogy.”
The show, titled ‘Is India’s BJP a threat to minorities’, questioned the BJP spokesperson over various issues, including the increase in communal violence, the claim of Hindu terror not existing, Pragya Thakur’s candidature from Bhopal and the idea of a ‘Hindu Rashtra’.
Asked whether he agreed with the ‘no Hindu terror’ claim made by PM Modi in his recent election speeches, Kohli said, “At least I have not heard of anybody using Hinduism as a religion as a basis to justify (terrorism).”
Mehdi Hasan then went on to ask him if Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, was a terrorist or not, to which Kohli responded indicating that one cannot look at every act of murder as terrorism.
Referring to Gandhi’s assassination, Kohli said:
With Malegaon blast accused Pragya Thakur’s candidature from the Bhopal constituency for the BJP having stirred considerable controversy, Al Jazeera asked Nalin Kohli why she has been fielded when she’s on trial for terrorism. While acknowledging that Thakur is indeed on trial, Kohli pointed out that not even an iota of evidence has been found against her.
During the course of the conversation, Al Jazeera also brought up the increase in incidents of communal violence, to which Kohli pointed towards the trend of “greater reporting” in the recent years.
When questioned if the BJP government is working towards eventually converting India into a Hindu Rashtra or a state, Kohli pointed out that India is a country where constitutionally, every religion is given equal rights.
Asked if he supports the call for a Hindu state, Kohli refrained from giving a direct ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer, as he stated, “That’s a 30-minute debate to understand in what context it’s used. Not to convert India into a theologically driven Hindu state. It’s not.”
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