Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has stoked a controversy after he said the fight in India is about whether a Sikh is going to be allowed to wear his turban or go to a Gurdwara, in a veiled attack on the ruling BJP, which he has been accusing of doing “divisive” politics.

The BJP slammed Gandhi for his remarks and accused him of setting a ”dangerous narrative”.

Addressing the Indian Diaspora in Washington DC in the United States, Gandhi said, “We have to understand what the fight is about. The fight is not about politics. It is superficial.”

Asking a person wearing a turban who was present in the hall what his name is, he said, “The fight is about whether he as a Sikh is going to be allowed to wear his turban in India or he as a Sikh is going to be allowed to wear a kada in India. Or he as a Sikh is going to be able to go to Gurudwara. That’s what the fight is about. And not just for him, for all religions.”

Attacking the RSS, the Leader of Opposition in the Lower House while taking names of the several states of India, said, “When I say Kerala or Punjab…. These are not simple words, these are your history, your language, your tradition, your entire imagination is in these words. What the RSS is basically saying, is that certain states are inferior to other states, certain languages are inferior to other languages, certain religions are inferior to other religions, certain communities are inferior to other communities.”

Referring to the Congress, Gandhi said, “We are of the Opinion, whether you are from Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, all of you have your history, tradition, language and every single one of them is as important as any other one.”

He further said, “The ideology of RSS is that Tamil, Marathi, Bengali, Manipuri, these are only inferior languages. That’s what the fight is about. It ends up in the polling booth, in Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha, but the fight is about what type of India we are going to have.”

“Are we going to have an India where people are allowed to believe what they want to believe, people are allowed to respect , what they want to respect, say what they want to say , listen to what they want to hear ? Or we are going to have an India, where only a few limited people can decide what is going to happen. The problem is these people don’t understand India,” Gandhi said.

Asserting that India is called a Union of states, Gandhi said, “In the Constitution it is written clearly, India i.e Bharat is a union of states. What does it mean ? It means a union of languages, it’s a union of traditions , union of histories… That is what the fight is about.”

Reacting to Gandhi’s statement, Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri while accusing him of setting a dangerous narrative, said, “One needs to figure out why the Leader of Opposition Mr Rahul Gandhi makes outlandish and defamatory statements about India on foreign soil. But what he has now said about Sikhs not being able to wear Kada and Turban borders on being purely delusional and absurd.”

At a press conference at the BJP headquarters here, he said, “Truth is that Sikhs have never been safer anywhere in the world than they are in India today. If there ever was any fear or anxiety in their minds about being identified as Sikhs due to their Kada, Kirpan or Turban, it was only during the mindless one-sided violence and pogrom against members of the Sikh Sangat in 1984.”

“This was when thousands of Sikhs were massacred and the act was justified by Rahul Ji‘s father Rajiv Gandhi. It was during subsequent Congress regimes that Sikhs were denied justice and those responsible were rewarded with plum party posts. It took the determination of PM Narendra Modi Ji to get the cases reopened. Now they are all being held accountable one by one,” Puri said.

The Minister added, “Let me assure you, this government will make sure that every perpetrator of the crimes and violence against the Sikh Sangat is brought to justice.”