Hours after Indian Overseas Congress head Sam Pitroda’s racist remark, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday lambasted the grand old party for ‘insulting Indians based on their colour’.
“I can tolerate it when abuses are hurled at me, but not when they are hurled at my people. We will not accept this racist mentality,” the prime minister said.
He added that he now understands why the Congress keeps insulting President Droupadi Murmu. “…Just because her skin colour is black,” Modi remarked.
#WATCH | Addressing a public gathering in Warangal, Telangana, PM Modi says "I was thinking a lot that Droupadi Murmu who has a very good reputation and is the daughter of Adiwasi family, then why is Congress trying so hard to defeat her but today I got to know the reason. I got… pic.twitter.com/nPJLQ6DQ3Z— ANI (@ANI) May 8, 2024
“I was thinking a lot that Droupadi Murmu who has a very good reputation and is the daughter of Adiwasi family, then why is Congress trying so hard to defeat her but today I got to know the reason. I got to know that there is an uncle in America who is the philosophical guide of ‘Shehzada’ and just like the third umpire in cricket this ‘Shehzada’ takes advice from the third umpire. This philosophical uncle said that those who have black skin are from Africa. This means that you are abusing several people of the country on the basis of their skin colour..,” PM Narendra Modi said in Telangana’s Warangal.
The PM’s remarks came after Pitroda, who is often considered a close aide of Rahul Gandhi, said people in India’s East look like Chinese and those in the South like Africans.
Following Pitroda’s statement, Chief Ministers from BJP-ruled states in the Northeast — Assam and Manipur — attacked the Congress leader and demanded an apology from the Congress.
Manipur CM N Biren Singh said that Congress has a hidden agenda to divide India on religious grounds and blamed the opposition party for the situation in the state, where over 100 people were killed and thousands left homeless in the violence since May last year.
Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who is from Tamil and represents Karnataka in Rajya Sabha, said that she is from South and looks as much Indian as her teammates from north-east India and west India. “But for racist mentor of Rahul Gandhi, we all look African, Chinese, Arab and the White,” she posted on ‘X’.
I am from South India. I look Indian! My team has enthusiastic members from north east India. They look Indian! My colleagues from west India look Indian! But, for the racist who is the mentor of @RahulGandhi we all look African, Chinese, Arab and the White! Thanks for… pic.twitter.com/UzXi4ndwhk— Nirmala Sitharaman (Modi Ka Parivar) (@nsitharaman) May 8, 2024
As the controversy snowballed, veteran Congress leader Jairam Ramesh dubbed Pitroda’s comments as “most unfortunate and unacceptable”. “The Indian National Congress completely dissociates itself from these analogies,” Ramesh wrote on X.
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