Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan stirred a hornet’s nest on Saturday by saying that only those people who are ready say ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ can live in India.
He was speaking at the 54th annual three-day conference of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad’s (ABVP) Maharashtra unit in Pune. The minister of petroleum and natural gas blamed protesters for the violence during the anti-citizenship law agitations across the country.
“Will we make a dharmashala out of our country? Can anyone enter and live in our country? We have to accept this challenge and clarify one thought. In Bharat, you have to say ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’. Only those people can stay,” said Pradhan while speaking in Hindi at the event of the RSS-affiliated students’ organisation.
“(I ask) these protesting people, is there one country in this world, which does not keep an account of its citizens? There is not one country where there is no account of citizens are residents,” he said.
Invoking India’s struggle for Independence and several freedom fighters, he said, “Will the sacrifice of Bhagat Singh and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose be in vain? Did uncountable Indians fight for our freedom so that 70 years after freedom this country will think about whether or not to keep accountability of citizenship or not?” the minister asked.
“When citizens living in this country are subjected to violence in the name of citizenship, the relevance and responsibility of organisations like ABVP increases. The people, who mislead the country, break it, and perpetrate violence and propaganda, can only be answered by nationalist groups,” he said.
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