Summary Indian home minister has accused RSS and BJP of promoting Hindu terrorism.
Indian home minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Sunday kicked up a storm by accusing RSS and BJP training camps promoting Hindu ``terrorism in the country with the main Opposition party angrily hitting back, describing the remark as an attempt to divide the nation and seeking an apology from Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
"They are talking about infiltration but we have this report that whether it is BJP or RSS, their training camps are promoting Hindu terrorism," Shinde said at the Congress meeting in Jaipur.
"We are keeping a strict eye on it. The Samjhauta Express blast, Mecca Masjid (blast), Malegaon blast — they are planting bombs and blaming minorities for it. We need to be careful for safety of our country," the minister added.
This is probably for the first time that a senior member of the government has publicly sought to link terrorism to a religious basis, with the government being chary of using terms like Islamic terrorism. Shinde directly linked BJP and RSS with groups like Abhinav Bharat, which is charged with the Malegaon and Samjhauta blasts.
There were angry exchanges between then home minister P Chidambaram and BJP MPs in the Rajya Sabha after the Congress leader said the government was going to pursue a zero tolerance policy against both jihadi terrorism and Hindu militancy. BJP sought to know why he refrained from using the term "Islamic terrorism" even though he used the words Hindu terrorism during his reply to the debate on the internal security.
