New Delhi:
A day after the BJP questioned his presence at the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind conference in Deoband, where a fatwaa was issued against Vande Mataram, Home Minister P Chidambaram has hit back.
Chidambaram says he was not present when the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind adopted a resolution at its 30th general session in Deoband on Tuesday asking Muslims not to recite 'Vande Mataram'.
"Home Minister P Chidambaram was at the JUH conference at Deoband on November 3 between 10 am and 12 noon. No resolution was passed during that period. When he spoke, he was not aware of any resolution relating to Vande Mataram or women's reservation and television," a statement issued by his aide said.
Besides, the Home Minister was reading from a prepared text and there was no occasion to depart from that text, the statement said reacting to a statement of BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.
The Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind had on Tuesday endorsed a fatwaa issued by the influential Darul Uloom seminary at Deoband that calls on Muslims not to sing Vande Mataram as doing so was violative of Islam's faith in monotheism.
The resolution was passed on a day when the home minister addressed the assembly at Deoband.
The BJP lost no time in reacting - claiming that the minister's presence had "legitimised" the "anti-Vande Mataram" view.
The Jamiat move has come in the backdrop of some states like BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh introducing singing of Vande Mataram in government-run schools.
BJP vice-president Mukhtar Naqvi said singing Vande Mataram was not compulsory but the manner in which the Jamiat opposed the verses immortalised in Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's classic was unacceptable. He also targeted Chidambaram for addressing a gathering where the singing of Vande Mataram was opposed saying this would be read as support for the Jamiat's "retrograde" viewpoint.