JP slams UPA government for defaming Hindu community

Indore (M.P.), Nov 24 : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday slammed the ruling Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government for defaming the country by using terms like Hindu terrorism.

Senior BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani, accused the ruling Congress-led UPA Government of defaming the country by using terms like Hindu terror.

"I believe lot of things said by the government at this time is to cover its failures. This attitude to link terror to a community or a religion is something that has began just a month or two ago. When Indira Gandhi was assassinated we never said it was Sikh terror. We never thought of Muslim terror. We never thought that someone would talk about Hindu terror. We have defamed the country by cropping terms like Hindu terror. People in the world know about Jihadi terror, Al-Qaeda terror. No one accepts Hindu terror, Muslim terror or Sikh terror. But our government and its agencies have defamed the country by using such terms," Advani told reporters in Indore today.

Earlier this month Maharashtra's Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) detained Sadhvi Pragya Singh, Dayanand Pandey and Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Shrikant Purohit in connection with the Malegaon blasts.

Five people were killed in the blasts that hit the two Muslim-dominated towns, the other being Modasa in Gujarat, on September 29.

For years, bomb attacks in India have mostly been blamed on Islamist militants. Even attacks on mosques were often blamed on Islamists seeking to spark communal tension between India's majority Hindus and minority Muslims.

Muslim leaders have accused authorities of conducting a witch hunt and reinforcing stereotypes about their community after dozens of Muslims were detained following a string of bomb attacks across the country this year.

India is in the midst of Assembly elections in five states, including Jammu and Kashmir, which see the two major political parties the Congress and the BJP pitted against each other in most of the states.

These elections are expected to be a run down to the forthcoming general elections in early 2009 that would test the political temperature in the country.

ANI