Salman Khurshid backs Shinde on saffron terror

External affairs minister Salman Khurshid today backed home minister Sushilkumar Shinde’s statement on “Hindu terrorism” saying it was based “entirely on facts” made available by investigative agencies.

He, however, said that terror has no religion and colour. “Let me just say this to you very clearly that our stated position, that is shared fully by the home minister and past home minister, is based entirely on facts as the investigative agencies have made available to the government,” Khurshid told reporters here.

Unfazed by the BJP’s demand for sacking Shinde for his statement, Khurshid said “The attempt to divert attention and to push it in a particular pre-meditated direction by some people was obviously repudiated by the information that was available with the home ministry and that is the context in which all these statements are made”.

Shinde had earlier this week stoked a controversy by accusing the BJP and the RSS of conducting terror training camps and promoting “Hindu terrorism”.

Defending Shinde, Khurshid said one should not be lookingat finer notions of what should be and can be said at any given time.

“I think core understanding is that there are elements who want to use some cover of pretence and some cover of allegation against other groups to continue on their nefarious and unwholesome activities,” he said when asked about Mumbai attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed and LeT trying to exploit Shinde’s statement.

Khurshid underlined that any form of violence that is propagated by extremists of any kind, irrespective of religion is what is dangerous for India.

“Terror does not have religion. We have said this very clearly. And religion should not be associated with colour. This we have said very clearly. It is terror that we have to fight. Terror directed against India that we are fighting”.

He said those are the facts available to the home ministry on which the government have been consistently making the statement. “I think we should not be distracted by a phrase here or there frankly. The intention, the commitment, the determination is what clearly matters,” he said.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/219625" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: &lt;a&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;strong&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;dl&gt; &lt;dt&gt; &lt;dd&gt;</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-0b68d9b948741cecab7b1e59ec8225b2" value="form-0b68d9b948741cecab7b1e59ec8225b2" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80066142" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.