'Jinnah on a short tour of India, will return home to Pakistan after 2019 elections'

UP Congress President Raj Babbar has said that Pakistan's founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah is on a short stay in India and he will go back to Pakistan once the 2019 elections are over.

Talking to India Today on the debate over Jinnah's portrait in the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Babbar said that the portrait of Jinnah has been hanging in AMU since 1938 but nobody raised a dispute over it till the BJP started to feel that it may not win the 2019 elections. He said that the specter of Jinnah's portrait has been purposely raised by the BJP to increase polarisation of Hindu votes towards it, as it is clear that they could not win the election on the basis of development in their tenure.

Meanwhile, demand is being raised that Jinnah's portrait be replaced with the portrait of Raja Mahendra Pratap who had donated his land for the construction of AMU and AMU itself should be renamed as Raja Mahendra Pratap University.

A number of Hindu activists told India Today that there was a time when Raja Mahendra Pratap was a strong opponent of the erstwhile Jansangh and contesting as an independent in 1957 parliamentary elections, he had even defeated Atal Bihari Vajpayee who had been contesting the election on a Jansangh ticket from Mathura.

It is interesting to note here that the former prince of Hathras who was completely against the Jansangh, has suddenly become a favorite of the Hindu outfits and the BJP who are demanding that his statue be placed in AMU.

Krishan Gopal, a resident of Aligarh, told India Today that Raja Mahendra Pratap had even promulgated a new religion 'Prem Dharm' in 1916 while he was in Afghanistan. He had even written a book 'Prem Dharma Granth'. The book has seven chapters and he had presented a copy of the book to the royal family of Afghanistan after which Afghanistan had removed all restrictions placed on Hindus in their country and prince Inayatullah Khan had placed the book with the holy Quran in a glass box in his palace. Raja Mahendra Pratap had even established Prem Mahavidyalaya in Vrindavan (Mathura).

Meanwhile, Islamic clerics have decreed that Jinnah's portrait was against Islam which forbids making portraits or pictures of anyone and hanging it anywhere. Only pictures that are allowed under Islam are those on government documents like Aadhar card and passport.

Naib Mufti Azfar Hussein said that Jinnah's portrait is a direct violation of Islamic edicts against taking or making pictures of living beings and it should be immediately removed from the students union hall of the AMU.