New Delhi: Ahead of his first public rally in Jammu on Sunday following his bitter exit from the Congress, Ghulam Nabi Azad yesterday took a swipe at his former political party over assertions that he was cozying up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He said that meeting and talking to political rivals does not change one’s DNA.
Azad is set to begin his fresh political journey Sunday from Jammu where he will set up the first unit of his own party.
Notably, the Congress had insinuated that Azad was cozying up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi after he left the party. After the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister had quit Congress last week, his party colleague Jairam Ramesh had said that Azad’s DNA had been ‘modi-fied’.
After Azad ended his five-decade-long association with the Congress, several party leaders attacked him, citing PM Modi’s February 2021 Rajya Sabha speech in which he had praised the veteran leader Jammu and Kashmir as a “true friend”.
Addressing a book release function in New Delhi on Saturday, Azad said: “MPs from 22 parties spoke about me (on my farewell) but only what the Prime Minister said was highlighted.
“If you meet people from other political parties and talk to them, it does not change your DNA,” he said and lamented that political parties nowadays seem to be “at war”.
Ghulam Nabi Azad had resigned from the Congress on 26 August, terming the party “comprehensively destroyed” and lashing out at former party president and MP Rahul Gandhi for “demolishing” the party’s entire consultative mechanism.
Referring to PM Modi’s emotional speech, Azad said it’s a tradition that one-third members retire from Rajya Sabha every two years and MPs from various parties give speeches on the occasion.
He further said the composite culture of India has changed over the years.
“Hindus and Muslims stayed together…. It was not unusual for Hindus to study Arabic and Muslims to study the Gita. This was our country’s composite culture,” he said.
Earlier, only two occasions were celebrated in Delhi’s political circles — Eid Milan and Diwali Milan — he said.
“Both (former prime ministers Atal Bihari) Vajpayee-ji and Indira Gandhi used to come. Now political parties are like they are at war…,” he said.
“Unfortunately we all have been divided and it is saddening,” he said at the launch of the book, ‘Moon of the Saffron Fields – The Legend of Habba Khatoon’ by Padma Shri awardee Pran Kishore.
With inputs from PTI
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