Kharge’s Diwali Remark Draws BJP Criticism

The Bharatiya Janata Party criticised Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Sunday after he used the phrase ‘Khushiyon Ka Eid’ while speaking to the media on Diwali. BJP spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari seized on the wording of the greeting in a post on X, accusing the Congress of appealing to a vote bank during the Hindu festival.

Bhandari also called the Congress ‘anti-Sanatan’ and tied Kharge’s choice of words to a separate interview in which former Congress president Sonia Gandhi recalled her reaction to the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

BJP Links Kharge’s Remark To Sonia Gandhi’s Interview

Speaking to The Guardian ahead of the release of her memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, Gandhi recalled watching the events of December 6, 1992, on television. She said she cried as the Babri Masjid was demolished and recalled thinking that India faced a long struggle to preserve its secular foundations.

Gandhi also reflected on her party’s role in the political changes of that period. She said the Congress had been complacent in several respects and acknowledged that this had helped create space for the rise of the BJP and its Hindutva politics.

BJP’s Trivedi Questions Congress

BJP spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Sudhanshu Trivedi also took aim at Gandhi’s account. Speaking to the media in Delhi, he alleged that the Congress had long been sympathetic to Babur, the Mughal ruler. BJP leaders also questioned Gandhi’s recollection of seeing the demolition unfold on television.

The two Congress leaders were speaking on separate occasions. Kharge made his remarks during Diwali, while Gandhi discussed the events of 1992 in a memoir interview. Bhandari brought the two together in his criticism of the Congress.