Union Minister Giriraj Singh has said on Thursday that people should not hesitate to say 'Bharat Mata ki jai' or buy khadi.
The Indian Express reported that Singh made the remarks while inaugurating Raymond Limited's khadi collection in Mumbai on Thursday.
The reported quoted him as saying, "Gandhi's dream and Modi's dream to take khadi to the global market will not be fulfilled unless we take the entrepreneurial route."
Singh's remarks on chanting 'Bharat Mata ki jai' comes close on the heels of Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh causing a controversy saying those who don't chants of "Bharat Mata ki Jai" and "Jai Sri Ram" in the country will become history.
"A leader like Narendra Modi has the capacity to take such decisions in this platform. If anyone restricts he will be thrown out from here. From Gujarat to Guwahati and from Kashmir to Kanyakumari everyone has to utter Bharat Mata ki jai and Jai Sri Ram and the one who would oppose this has to be a part of history," Ghosh had said in April.
In fact, now Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, had also said last year that those who don't chant 'Bharat Mata ki jai' or 'Vande Mataram' should leave the country.
A similar controversy has been brewing over the months with several BJP-led civic bodies across Uttar Pradesh pushing for the singing of Vande Mataram during meetings.
The song written in Bengali and Sanskrit by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee was a pean for India, which is portrayed as the motherland. While minorities don't have a problem singing the first few paragraphs of the song, they have an objection to the latter part which mentions Goddess Durga. There are reservations among minorities for the same reason for chanting 'Bharat Mata ki jai.'
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