Hyderabad: Telangana MLA Raja Singh, who was suspended from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last year for derogatory comments against Prophet Muhammad, has now pitched that the country should be declared ‘Akhand Hindu Rashtra’ (Undivided Hindu nation).
Speaking at a Ram Navami Shobha Yatra Thursday, Singh added that a separate ‘Hindu Rashtra’ constitution is being prepared and that the country will only allow hum do humare do kind of people to vote, not those who are ‘hum paanch, humare pachas’.
He said the capital of this Rashtra would be Kashi, Mathura or Ayodhya.
“There is a 100-crore Hindu population in India and despite such a majority. Despite such a majority, India is not being declared as an Akhand Hindu Rashtra.
“There are more than 50 Islamic nations in the world today, more than 150 Christian-majority nations. I want to ask those opposing the idea, ‘why can’t India be declared a Hindu Rashtra? Every part (state or region) that split from India became an Islamic nation’,” Singh said as the crowd cheered him on.
“Our sadhu-sants have already started planning on how our Hindu Rashtra will be, a separate constitution is also being prepared…and our capital will not be Delhi, it will be Kashi, Mathura or Ayodhya. I am not saying this, sadhu-sants are saying this,” he added.
He also released a song, ‘Jail ka taala toot gaya, baap tumhara chhoot gaya (Jail locks broke open, letting your leader out)’. The song also talks about his demand for a Hindu nation.
Singh was also seen asking the driver to stop the vehicle when the yatra reached a mosque in the old city, and talking about how his elder son would take forward his legacy of fighting for Hindutva.
City Police Commissioner C.V. Anand, who was monitoring the yatra virtually, said the processions went off peacefully.
This is not the first time that Singh has made objectionable comments. From calling Hyderabad’s old city, which has a significant Muslim population, ‘mini Pakistan’, to saying Rohingya Muslims are terrorists and should be shot, Singh has a penchant for making controversial statements.
MLA & hate speeches
Tiger Raja Lodha Singh is an MLA from Hyderabad’s communally-sensitive area of Goshamahal.
The Mumbai Police had Thursday booked him for allegedly delivering a hate speech on 29 January when he was in the city for a rally organised by right wing groups.
Singh was suspended from the BJP and also arrested in August last year following his alleged anti-Muslim comments and remarks against Prophet Muhammad. The Preventive Detention Act was also invoked against him.
However, he was released from jail in November following high court orders, but on the condition that the suspended MLA will not make any provocative speeches against any community, or post anything derogatory in his social media posts, according to reports.
Earlier last year, the Hyderabad Police booked Singh two days after Ram Navami celebrations, following his objectionable comments which promoted enmity between two groups.
There are over 60 criminal cases pending against Singh, most of them for hate speech. In 2020, Meta, then called Facebook, had banned the MLA for violating their policy on hate speech.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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