Kolkata: The Congress Saturday came down heavily on BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi for not condemning yoga guru Baba Ramdev for using “gutter language”.
“I don’t know who calls him baba. Yoga has a spiritual and a physical dimension… With this kind of a mindset, using a gutter language… insulting dalits… insulting women… how can anyone call him a yoga guru,” Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi told reporters here.
“I think people have forgotten that Baba Ramdev has spent all of his energies for last several weeks not on yoga but on Modi…on the BJP,” he said.
Dubbing Bharatiya Janata Party’s culture as that of “bigotry and intolerance”, Singhvi questioned Modi’s inaction to stop such statements from Ramdev.
“He (Ramdev) has shared the stage with Modi and it is very easy to brush off all this, but who are these people? They reflect a mindset, a culture of bigotry and intolerance.”
He questioned what Modi had done to condemn Ramdev, or if he had expelled Giriraj Singh or denied a ticket to Sanjeev Balian.
Giriraj Singh, BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate from Bihar’s Nawada constituency, recently said critics of Modi will be sent to Pakistan.
Balian, BJP candidate from Muzaffarnagar, was accused of involvement in the communal riots that took place in Uttar Pradesh last year.