Intolerance issue a contrived anti-govt show, says Rajnath

He said that such a thing is happening just when the government's efforts of the last 18 months are yielding results and the economy is turning a corner

Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Tuesday a “handful” of people were “manufacturing” an atmosphere to malign India’s image and to deter foreign investments.

Replying at the end of a two-day discussion in the Lok Sabha on “increasing incidents of intolerance”,  he said this was as the government’s efforts over 18 months were yielding results and the economy was turning a corner.

His reply was disrupted when the Trinamool Congress and Left parties, and a little later the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and Janata Dal (United), protested that his speech had failed to address the real issue and staged a walkout. Singh said it was evident who was really intolerant. Other regional parties, particularly Samajwadi Party members, didn’t walk out.

The minister said the biggest victim of “intolerance” had been his Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He said some of  intellectuals and writers had failed to respect the huge mandate for Modi in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Singh pointed to three big episodes of intolerance in India over recent decades. These, he said, were the partition of the country in 1947, which people of the BJP’s ideological stream had opposed; the Emergency of 1975-77 and the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. Several opposition members, particularly of the Left parties, said the minister shouldn’t also forget the razing of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and the anti-Muslim Gujarat riots of 2002.

Opposition members also protested when Singh referred to religious violence in countries such as Pakistan, Iraq and those in West Asia, to claim how India was the most tolerant country in the world. “Please talk about the incidents of intolerance in India in 2015,” Congress’ Mallikarjun Kharge said.

Earlier, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi said the PM had remained silent even as members of his party like V K Singh, Adityanath and Sakshi Maharaj had made offensive statements. He said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had called the protests by intellectuals, industrialists and scientists “manufactured”. “Do you really think people like (N R) Narayanmurthy, P M Bhargava and Raghuram Rajan have nothing better to do?” Gandhi asked.

Congress’ Shashi Tharoor appealed to the PM to be careful not to spread “Hate in India” while selling Make in India abroad. He said a Bangladeshi friend of his told him a joke among the people in that country, on how it was safer to be a cow in India than a Muslim. The MIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi cited data to show how Muslims could not rent a house or get jobs except with difficulty and how there were more police stations than schools in Muslim ghettos.