Tyrants come and tyrants go, nations continue to survive: Farooq Abdullah




Former CM of Jammu and Kashmir Farooq Abdullah (Photograph Courtesy: Outlook)

“We had the opportunity of joining Pakistan in 1947, it was my father and the others who felt that the two nation theory is not for us,” former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah said on Friday on the occasion of a virtual book launch.

Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs or Christians are not different as they are all human beings and thus “we chose (Mahatma) Gandhi’s India, (Jawaharlal) Nehru’s India, an India that belong to everyone”, Abdullah said.

“That’s how I felt till this government came in. They think that only a Hindu can be an Indian and all the others who are there cannot be Indians, they are second class citizens. This I am never going to accept till my dying day,” he said.

“My belief is that this is for all of us, this is our motherland, we grew in it, we were educated in it, we have developed in it, our families live here, our ancestors are buried here, this is as good for me as it is for any Hindu. Today we are being divided, divided on religion, on caste on creed on language,” the National Conference leader said.

Speaking at the virtual launch of senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor’s book ‘The Battle of Belonging’, Abdullah said that tyrants come and tyrants go, nations continue to survive and I am confident that his nation will survive, these dividers will go.

In the book published by Aleph Book Company, Tharoor makes a stinging critique of the Hindutva doctrine and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which he says is a challenge to, arguably, the most fundamental aspect of Indianness.

He has asserted that Hindutva is a political doctrine and not a religious one.

Speaking at the event, Tharoor said that the BJP has spent its last six years in government contesting the idea of India by arguing that there can be an alternative idea of India.

(With inputs from PTI)

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