The Congress and other Opposition parties have flagged reports about the culture ministry and the Delhi government funding an event that called for the expulsion of Muslims from India and their forcible conversion, asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi if he doesn’t feel “ashamed”.

The event’s organiser, Sanatan Sanstha, is under investigation for the murders of journalist Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru in 2017, anti-superstition campaigner and physician Narendra Dabholkar in Pune in 2013, CPI leader Govind Pansare in Kolhapur in 2015 and Kannada literateur M.M. Kalburgi in Dharwad in 2015.

Congress spokesperson Ragini Nayak Basoya referred to a report in The Quint that the Sanatan Rashtra Shankhnad Mahotsav, organised by the Sanatan Sanstha at the Bharat Mandapam in December, was aided by the Centre and the Delhi tourism ministry and attended by BJP ministers.

The Quint also published an excerpt of an RTI reply that the organiser received ₹63 lakh for the event from the culture ministry.

Basoya said: “Union ministers Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Shripad Nayak, Sanjay Seth and Kapil Mishra, the riotous minister of the Delhi government... were present at that festival. The event discussed forced mass conversions of Muslims. The event discusses creating a Hindu nation by bypassing the Constitution....

“It discusses how Muslims should be killed and tortured and thrown out of India’s borders... ₹63 lakh is being given by the government of the country, Modi’s government, to empower such a communal organisation... Now there’s no need to even talk about fringe elements, because the Modi government is doing it itself.”

Basoya referred to an AI-generated video, uploaded on social media on February 7 and later taken down by the Assam BJP, that depicted a gun-wielding avatar of chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma taking aim at a framed photograph of two Muslim men. The video was captioned “Point blank shot”.

“I want to pose it to every just citizen of this country: That (if) a person holding a constitutional position would open fire on a community... and if the Union cabinet minister goes to an event where ethnic cleansing of a community is being discussed and the Indian government provides money, then what will remain of India’s honour and respect on the international stage?” she said.

Basoya said it was a tribute to India’s secularism that Modi was welcomed in Malaysia, where 65 per cent of the population is Muslim, “with a Titah Seri Rama puppet show based on the Ramayana”. “In that very secular India, a chief minister shoots Muslims (in a meme), and your government funds and promotes communal organisations. Don’t you feel even a little ashamed, Modiji?” she asked.

CPIML-Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya wrote on Facebook how “Sangh-BJP leaders and propagandists discussed ways to reduce India’s Muslim population by a quarter by enforcing mass conversion and mass deportation” at the event funded by the culture ministry.

The culture ministry did not respond to a request for comment from this paper.