New Delhi, March 22: The BJP is trying to co-opt Bhagat Singh into its heroes' pantheon, using Congress MP Shashi Tharoor's comparison of Kanhaiya Kumar to the freedom fighter.
"Bhagat Singh fought our colonisers; Kanhaiya hosted a grand function for an anti-national individual, Afzal Guru," Union minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters today.
"We demanded Tharoor's apology. He did not (apologise). The Congress distanced itself from him but did not seek his apology. So now we are calling for one (apology) from the Congress and (another from) Tharoor."
He added: "It's obvious that the Congress's role models have failed and they are having to borrow from others."
Asked whether the BJP too had not for years been borrowing other parties' icons, such as Vallabhbhai Patel, Madan Mohan Malviya and Mahatma Gandhi, Javadekar said: "What a thing to say! Patel and the others are national heroes."
The BJP will observe the anniversary of Bhagat Singh's martyrdom for three days from tomorrow notwithstanding Sangh ideologue M.S. Golwalkar's reservations about martyrdom as "great but not ideal" in his Bunch of Thoughts.
Singh was hanged on March 23, 1931, in a Lahore jail for killing a British police officer along with his associates Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru.
The first day will be commemorated as "Martyr's Day" but the BJP has woven a "Bharat Mata" theme around the programme.
Anurag Thakur, who helms the BJP's youth front, has announced a nationwide "India First" event tomorrow where volunteers will hold up the Tricolour and the BJP flag, chanting "Bharat Mata ki jai" and "Vande Mataram".
During Holi celebrations on Thursday, BJP members plan to gather and sing " Mera rang de basanti chola, mai rang de", a number from a 1965 movie on Singh titled Shaheed. Singh, played by Manoj Kumar, sings the song in the film before his execution.
On Friday, the BJP will “avenge” Tharoor’s tribute to Kanhaiya by burning symbolic effigies of the “psyche that insults martyrdom”.
The Sangh-BJP, however, have had an ambivalent relationship with Singh. Last December, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar had ignored a 2009 Assembly resolution to name Chandigarh's new international airport after Singh.
Khattar told the aviation ministry to name it after Mangal Sein, a former Haryana BJP leader who was deputy chief minister from 1977 to 1979 and died in 1990. But the proposal was shelved after the BJP's Punjab ally, the Akali Dal, insisted on retaining Singh's name.
Political observers believe that part of the Sangh's problematic view of Singh stems from his writings and statements that make it clear he was an atheist and a Marxist.
