Union Minister Anantkumar Hegde has dragged public discourse to a new low and targeted Karnataka Congress president Dinesh Gundu Rao referring to his Muslim wife.<\/p>\n
Known for his ill-considered and provocative remarks, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) minister was recently in the news for his inflammatory comments at an event at Karnataka\u2019s Kodagu district where he had declared that \u2018\u2018if a Hindu girl is touched by a hand, then that hand should not exist.\u2019\u2019 At the same gathering in front of a large crowd on Sunday, the minister said that the Taj Mahal was \u2018not built by Muslims\u2019 \u2013 it was \u2018Shiv mandir built by King Paramatheertha\u2019.<\/p>\n
Referring to Shah Jahan\u2019s autobiography, Hegde said that the book states that the Mughal emperor \u2018bought the palace\u2019 from King Jayasimha. He added that if \u2018we keep sleeping… our houses will be named manzil<\/em>\u2026 Lord Ram will be called Jahapana<\/em> and Sita will become bibi<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Reacting to this, the Karnataka Congress president tweeted that such comments were \u2018deplorable\u2019 and questioned his contribution to Karnataka\u2019s development. Unleashing a vicious attack, the BJP Union minister then tweeted that Dinesh Gundu Rao was a \u2018guy who ran after a Muslim woman\u2019 with no other achievements to speak of.\u00a0 Gundu Rao tweeted back saying that by bringing in \u2018personal issues\u2019, the Union minister had betrayed his \u2018lack of culture\u2019.<\/p>\n Anantkumar Hegde has remained the source of many controversial statements from since before 2017 when he joined the Central government. On the Sabarimala issue, he recently remarked that the handling of the issue by the Kerala government could be likened to \u2018daylight rape\u2019 of Hindus.<\/p>\n Hedge had even suggested in an earlier occasion that the word \u2018secular\u2019 be removed from the Indian Constitution, leading to widespread protests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Union Minister Anantkumar Hegde has dragged public discourse to a new low and targeted Karnataka Congress president Dinesh Gundu Rao referring to his Muslim wife. Known for his ill-considered and provocative remarks, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) minister was recently in the news for his inflammatory comments at an event at Karnataka\u2019s Kodagu district where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":4143,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4142"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=4142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}