BALLIA: Targeting Rahul Gandhi over his recent remarks on Hindu and Hindutva, Union minister A Narayanaswamy has said the Congress leader is not a Hindu and makes such remarks whenever elections near.
In remarks over the past few days, Gandhi has repeatedly sought to highlight the difference between Hindu and Hindutva and described Hindu as tolerant and Hindutva as power-seeking.
"Whenever the election comes he (Rahul Gandhi) speaks like this only, but he is not a Hindu," the minister told reporters on the sidelines of a social empowerment camp organised in Phephna area of Ballia district in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday.
Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh and some other states are due early next year. Dismissing Gandhi's attack on the government over incidents of lynching, the Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment said there is no such thing and the former Congress president does not know what is happening in the country.
"Before 2014, the word 'lynching' was practically unheard of. #ThankYouModiJi," Rahul Gandhi tweeted on Tuesday, days after two cases of lynching in the Congress-ruled Punjab.
The two men were lynched in separate incidents, and both of them were accused of sacrilege by Sikh religious leaders.
Terming the incidents of sacrilege and subsequent lynching in Punjab "unfortunate", the minister said the matter is being probed.