Union finance minister and senior BJP leader Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday hit out at opposition parties like the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) as well as its ally Congress for their “anti-Hindu” and “separatist” views. During an exclusive interview with Network18 Group Editor-in-Chief Rahul Joshi a day after presenting the Interim Budget in Parliament, the minister spoke on a range of economic and political issues.
“I have not said a loose word. I did mean what I said and I do truly believe that repeatedly the attacks on Hindus in Tamil Nadu, in layers which are seen and in layers which are not seen, has been felt for a long time. I speak about Tamil Nadu with lived experience and, therefore, I don’t talk too soon nor do I speak too indiscreetly. So, when I say something, I mean it because I feel it. I do corroborate it with data, with actual ground activity and only then do I comment,” she said. Unfortunately, if that is the politics of a state party which had a lot of ideological support extended to separatist politicians of years gone by; whether they support it even today, I do not know.” But, she said, there are periodic voices that come out, which are very separatist in tone and tenor.
“My grief is that a national party like the Congress has been decimated in Tamil Nadu; and today, till date, they are not in a position to win an election, even a couple of seats on their own without being in alliance with one of these parties,” the minister said. “The BJP is of course a beginner there; it’s been there since the Jan Sangh days and it’s gaining in strength. We’ll continue to work with the people, but the grief that I want to express is that a national party like the Congress also joins that anti-Hindu voice. It does not condemn the anti-Hindu voice of the party DMK and, even worse, goes out in support of such voices from DMK. And today, not just in Tamil Nadu, a Congress leader in the Lok Sabha, meaning he’s a sitting Lok Sabha MP, and the brother of the deputy chief minister of Karnataka, also speaks in a separatist voice.”
Congress MP from Karnataka DK Suresh Kumar’s controversial remark that the southern states would be compelled to demand “separate nationhood” if the Centre continued to “neglect” them has drawn strong criticism from the ruling BJP both inside and outside Parliament.
“So, anti-Hindu is one, anti-Hindi activity is another, which also is happening in Karnataka. Incidentally, the Congress in Tamil Nadu supports these kinds of anti-Hindu or separatist voices. And today, that is a spirit with which the Congress is also aligning. This is something I find utterly shocking,” Sitharaman said in the interview.
The minister said that rivals have always called the Bharatiya Janta Party two things: a Brahmin-Bania party and a Hindi party. “Today, the kind of support BJP receives in south India disproves all this. And I don’t want to name individuals and say, oh, he or she belongs to this caste. We’ve promoted this caste, and therefore, more than BJP, I can challenge today, is there any one party in India which has worked for the betterment of tribals in India, which has worked for the betterment of the Dalit, Scheduled Caste in India, which has recalled some of the best iconic leaders coming from those communities, but attaining national stature, whether it is Dr BR Ambedkar. Whether it is Guruji and considered like God himself, Birsa Munda. Whether it is the sons of the, Sahebzade, Sikh gurus, who gave their lives in their teenage for the sake of our country,” she said. “So in any one of these, I want to ask is there any one party in this country which has as much served as the BJP?”
What is a Hindi party, she asked. “When the prime minister of India is talking about all languages, he quotes Thiruvalluvar. He quotes from Purananuru. Every given opportunity he takes the languages even to the UN. So Tamil Nadu’s politics, speaking of these kinds of things, has happily kept the Hindi-speaking parts of the country, even if they are in alliance with them, away from the separatist rhetoric. So you think, oh, we are in alliance with that party. They cannot do any wrong. But they’ve been speaking all this separatist earlier, they’ve been speaking anti-Hindu earlier, only because of the language gap. Just as they didn’t want to learn Hindi, many of the north Indians didn’t want to learn Tamil. So there’s never been an understanding, a comprehensive, complete understanding of what’s developed in Tamil Nadu,” said Sitharaman.