A Kolkata court on Tuesday issued an arrest warrant against Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor over his 2018 ‘Hindu-Pakistan’ jibe against the Bharatiya Janata Party. The Kolkata Magistrate Metropolitan Court was hearing the case against the Congress leader filed by advocate Sumeet Chowdhury and a bailable warrant of Rs 500 has been issued after Tharoor failed to appear before it, reports said.
While addressing a gathering in Thiruvananthapuram in 2018, Shashi Tharoor had stated that if the BJP wins the Lok Sabha elections, a new Constitution will be written which will make India a ‘Hindu-Pakistan.’ Chowdhury had moved the court last year stating in his petition that Tharoor's comments had hurt religious sentiments.
According to Asian Age, Tharoor has also been sued under Section 2 of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 (Insults to Indian National Flag and Constitution of India).
“If they (BJP) win a repeat in the Lok Sabha, our democratic constitution, as we understand it, will not survive as they will have all the elements they need to tear apart the constitution of India and write a new one,” Shashi Tharoor had stated, as quoted by ANI.
“That new one will be the one which will enshrine principles of Hindu Rashtra, that'll remove equality for minorities, that'll create a Hindu Pakistan and that isn't what Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad and the great heroes of the freedom struggle fought for,” he had added.
His comments had sparked a big row and invited condemnation from the ruling BJP and his office in Thiruvananthapuram was vandalised by members of the Bharatiya Janata Party youth wing.
Tharoor had then taken to Facebook to issue a clarification, saying that his statement has been “bizarrely misconstrued.”
“I have said this before and I will say it again. Pakistan was created as a state with a dominant religion, that discriminates against its minorities and denies them equal rights. India never accepted the logic that had partitioned the country. But the BJP/RSS idea of a Hindu Rashtra is the mirror image of Pakistan -- a state with a dominant majority religion that seeks to put its minorities in a subordinate place. That would be a Hindu Pakistan, and it is not what our freedom movement fought for, nor the idea of India enshrined in our Constitution,” Tharoor wrote.