New Delhi: Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who is no stranger to controversy, has kicked up yet another one for his statement against the construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya.
The controversy sparked up when, at a literature festival in Chennai, Tharoor said that “no good Hindu” would want to build a Ram Temple after “demolishing somebody else’s place of worship.” The MP was speaking in reference to the demolition of the Babri Masjid that once stood on the disputed land.
He also said that the BJP would use communal polarisation in order to win the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He added that the people would have to brace themselves for more “unpleasantness” in the coming months as, in the past, there has been an uptick in the “stoking of religious passions” when elections approach.
In response to Tharoor’s reported statements, BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain questioned if Tharoor was demanding the removal of the makeshift temple where people were already performing poojas.
Feeling the heat of the fresh controversy, Tharoor later hit out at the media for “distorting” his words.
He tweeted his defence saying: “I condemn the malicious distortion of my words by some media in the service of political masters. I said: “most Hindus would want a temple at what they believe to be Ram’s birthplace. But no good Hindu would want it to be built by destroying another’s place of worship.”
