‘Have they started a Taliban in Hinduism?’: Shashi Tharoor on critics asking him to ‘go to Pakistan’

Shashi Tharoor has hit back at his opponents for asking him to go to Pakistan.

Thiruvananthapuram, July 18: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has been hogging the limelight since he made the controversial "Hindu Pakistan" remark against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) recently.

Along with top BJP leaders lambasting Tharoor for his "anti-Hindu" and "anti-BJP" remarks, members of the youth wing of BJP vandalised his office in Kerala on Monday.

On Tuesday, during his visit to his parliamentary constituency, Thiruvananthapuram, saffron party workers waved black flags against him.

"They are asking me to go to Pakistan. Who has given them the right to decide that I am not a Hindu like them and I don't have the right to stay in the country? Have they started a Taliban in Hinduism?" Tharoor was quoted as saying by ANI in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday.

Tharoor recently warned that if the ruling BJP wins the 2019 Lok Sabha elections once again, then the saffron party will turn India into a "Hindu Pakistan". The Lok Sabha member of Parliament alleged that the BJP will write a new Constitution which will pave the way for a nation, much like Pakistan, where rights of minorities are not respected.

"If they (the BJP) win a repeat in the Lok Sabha our democratic Constitution as we understand it will not survive as they will have all the elements they need to tear apart the Constitution of India and write a new one," Tharoor said at an event in Thiruvananthapuram.

"That new one will be the one which will enshrine principles of Hindu Rashtra, that will remove equality for minorities, that will create a Hindu Pakistan and that isn't what Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and great heroes of freedom struggle fought for," he added.

The BJP had demanded an apology from Congress president Rahul Gandhi over Tharoor's "Hindu Pakistan" remarks. On his part, Tharoor said that he won't apologise as he stated a fact.