Indore: Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Tuesday alleged that Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM and the BJP indulge in “friendly wrestling” in northern states.
He was commenting on the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s decision to contest 100 seats in the coming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.
Why did Owaisi’s party not contest all the assembly seats in its home state of Telangana? Why it contests Bihar polls and why it is entering into fray in Uttar Pradesh? It is just friendly wrestling,” Singh told reporters here.
Fundamentalist ideologies, whether of Hindus or Muslims, are nothing but two sides of the same coin, the Congress leader said.
On the row triggered by noted lyricist Javed Akhtar’s comparison between RSS and the Taliban, Singh said, Akhtar is a renowned thinker. I am not aware in what context he made the statement. But the country’s Constitution has given freedom to every citizen including Akhtar to express his views, even if you agree with them or not. Asked about the Madhya Pradesh government’s plan to teach MBBS students about the founder of the RSS Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar and other personalities associated with Hindutva ideology, Singh said sarcastically that now the students do not need to study basic medicine.
The ideology to which they belong has nothing to do with science and modernism. They wanted to take the country back to the 17th and 18th centuries, the Congress leader said.