Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday said this country does not belong to any particular religion, caste or language.
Addressing a gathering during the distribution of ownership pattas to slum dwellers, Gadkari said the BJP had never done politics based on caste or religion and theirs was a politics of service and development. Gadkari said India was of every person who loved it, be it a Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Jain, Christians or others.
"We [BJP] have never done politics based on caste or religion... We never did politics on caste, religion and language. But, we did politics of service and development of poor," Gadkari said. "Because a poor man is poor, be it a Muslim, Jain, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, dalit or a tribal," he said.
Gadkari further said that there cannot be partiality in the work of development. "We know that those who cannot compete with us on the development front, try to scare people with poison of casteism and communalism," he said.
He said it was said that if Gadkari gets elected then "you will be sent to Pakistan" and questioned, "What did I do, whom did I scare and whom was I unjust to?"
He said the BJP will work for people whether or not they vote for it. "This country does not belong to any particular religion, caste, or language. This country is of every person who loves it, be it a Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Jain, Christian and others," said Gadkari.
In recent months, Gadkari has been in the news for statements that have been interpreted as being veiled criticism of BJP chief Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In October, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi tweeted a video of Gadkari claiming the BJP made tall promises to win the 2014 elections. In December, a farmers' leader in Maharashtra demanded Gadkari be made prime minister by the RSS if the BJP wanted to win the coming Lok Sabha polls.
Interestingly, after the BJP's loss in assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, Gadkari had claimed if he were party president, he would be held accountable for the electoral defeat of MLAs.
