The Lok Sabha was adjourned thrice on Monday after the Opposition created noisy scenes over BJP leader and former Rajya Sabha MP Tarun Vijay’s purported “racial” remarks on South Indians in recent a television show.
This was despite the government assuring the House that no discrimination would be allowed based on caste, creed or colour.
The Congress and CPI(M), which trooped to the Well of the House, shouted slogans seeking stringent action against Vijay, including registration of an FIR under Article 15 of the Constitution, which prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, raced, caste, sex or place of birth. They were supported by the TMC, NCP, JD(U), AIADMK and TRS, among others.
Seeking to calm down the Opposition, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said: “India is a secular country,” adding that Vijay had already said that his remark was “indefensible” and had “sincerely apologised”. He said the BJP leader had also said that “he was the adopted son of a Tamil mother.” An unrelenting Opposition, however, accused the Home Minister of “defending” Vijay, forcing Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to comment: “This is not a court.”
Attacking the ruling BJP over the remarks, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge wondered whether the people from South India are not Indian citizens. “I want to know whether we are Indians or not...Are we not citizens (of India),” he said during Zero Hour, adding that Vijay is “not an ordinary person”, but a former Rajya Sabha member, ex-editor of RSS magazine Panchjanya, author of books on BJP philosophy, and a columnist for 22 newspapers.
He said Vijay’s remarks are a “threat” to the unity of the country, adding that if such things go on, then States would start asserting for independence.
He cited BR Ambedkar, who had said, in 1949, that “If we continue such things (discrimination), one day we will lose our freedom.”
Commenting on the alleged racial attacks on Nigerians in Delhi on a foreign TV channel, Vijay had said that Indians could not be racist because “we live with black people”, who were “all around us”, referring to people in South India. The former MP later apologised on Twitter, saying it was a “badly framed sentence.”