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Rahul's Pakistan comments invite ire of Islamic clerics
By IANS,
Apr 16, 2007 - 2:09:49 PM
Lucknow, April 16 - Rahul Gandhi is 'obsessed with his family', feel Islamic clerics and opposition leaders, blasting the Congress MP's remarks that the Gandhi family was responsible for India's independence and Bangladesh's creation.
The scion of India's first political family stated at an election rally in Uttar Pradesh in Badaun district Sunday that 'members of the Gandhi family have always achieved the goals they have initiated - be it the nation's independence or splitting Pakistan into two by creation of Bangladesh'.
The statement had invited strong disapproval from Pakistan.
Leading Shia cleric and scholar Maulana Kalbe Jawaad and Lucknow's Naib Imam Maulana Khalid Rasheed, who heads one of India's oldest Islamic institutions, Firangi Mahal, were critical of Rahul's comments.
'Is he is so obsessed with his family that he wants to hog all the credit for anything and everything? Then he should also be ready to take the blame for the partition of India as well,' observed Jawaad. 'Perhaps he forgot to add that.'
'I really wonder why he was out to give a handle to communal forces by making such statements at a time when the BJP - and its allies are desperately trying to fan communal passions,' Rasheed told IANS Monday.
'I fail to understand what makes Rahul think that both the partition of the country or creation of Bangladesh were any kind of feather in the Gandhi family cap,' he said.
'In fact, both were retrograde steps that failed to help India in any manner. Wouldn't it have been so much better if we were one big nation?'
On Rahul's remarks on India's independence, the Maulana wanted counseled Rahul: 'He must realise that there were very many other leaders who laid down their lives for our independence. How could he go to the extent of even ignoring the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi?'
Interestingly, even BJP veteran Lalji Tandon sought to know 'if Rahul was trying to confuse the people of this country that his Gandhi lineage was the same as that of Mahatma Gandhi?'
Tandon, who, besides being former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Man Friday in Lucknow is also the state's opposition leader in the assemb ly, added sarcastically: 'I have known a lot of foreigners who believe the Nehru-Gandhi clan to be a part of Mahatma Gandhi's family. And I would not be surprised if an ignorant Rahul too lives under that illusion.'
BJP state president Keshrinath Tripathi, also a highly accomplished lawyer at the Allahabad High Court, flayed Rahul Gandhi for being 'too obsessed' with his own family.
'Apparently, Rahul has yet to grow out of a mindset where he cannot think beyond his own family. I will not be surprised if he actually believes that it was just his Gandhi family that got India independence. Maybe, Mahatma Gandhi does not figure in his list at all,' Tripathi said.
Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh dismissed Rahul's remark as an expression of his 'bid to hog the limelight in a state where the Congress exists only for namesake'.
'Rahul Gandhi keeps issuing such immature statements so that he can remain in the headlines. After all, he knows that his party only has marginal presence in this state,' he said.
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