BJP president Amit Shah has claimed the support of “everyone across the country” for the party’s stand on nationalism, dismissing the current debate as something that has arisen out of a “lack of commensurate words in the English language to capture certain concepts.”
In an exclusive interview to The Hindu , while on his campaign in Assam, he said the word ‘secularism’ in the Indian context was another example of such a “confusion.”
“Whoever has started this debate on nationalism will soon realise that not just Assam, but the whole country is with us on this issue. The confusion that some people have over the question of nationalism stems from the positing of the concept of what constitutes a state. We are a ‘rashtra’. There is no word in English to explain that concept, of a cultural whole. It is just a confusion on such issues because the English vocabulary is unable to supply words for our concepts. A prime example of this is secularism. It means sarva dharma samabhav and not asaampradayikta as some people have defined it,” he said.
The party’s first item in its vision document for Assam, is to seal the India-Bangladesh border to keep out illegal immigrants. The document also gives a historical perspective of the assimilative nature of Assamese society.
Mr. Shah dismissed any contradiction in any of these things. “We have spoken of sealing the international border and of harmony and assimilation within it.”
“We have spoken of sealing the international border and of assimilation within it. There is no contradiction, or do you want that we disband our armed forces,” Mr. Shah said.
As the campaign heats up in the other States, Mr. Shah said his party was hopeful of doing well in all States, even in Tamil Nadu where it has of late become aggressive in its criticism of Chief Minister Jayalalithaa.
“It isn’t true that we haven’t been aggressive about attacking the Chief Minister’s record. Every time I have travelled to Tamil Nadu, I have attacked the corruption of that government. Nobody can say the current government in Tamil Nadu is not corrupt.”
“The DMK and the AIADMK have thoroughly corrupted the election process, and our fight is largely to overcome this,” he said.
“The BJP is no longer considered just a party of Hindi-speaking parts…This time, you will have to turn conventional electoral wisdom in Kerala and Tamil Nadu on its head when the results are out,” he said.
