Varun Gandhi, the lesser-known grandson of Indira Gandhi, was pitched into the center of a national row on Wednesday after an election campaign video showed him apparently delivering a venomous attack on Muslims.
The video, played repeatedly on Indian news television channels and on Web sites, shows him denigrating Muslims while addressing an election meeting in his parliamentary constituency in northern Uttar Pradesh, the home state of the charismatic Nehru-Gandhi family.
The election commission, which is overseeing the April-May vote, ruled yesterday that all future rallies held by Varun Gandhi should be monitored and recorded on video and ordered his party leadership to explain his actions.
Though Gandhi does not deny giving the controversial speech, he insisted the video had been “doctored” and that what he said was “mangled.”
“I believe very firmly that this is the result of a political conspiracy,” he said. “This is not my voice, those are not my words. I’ve a soft voice, [but in the video] I sound like [Bollywood star] Amitabh Bachchan.”
“Nothing I have said was intended to incite anyone. There is no question of my having any ill feeling towards any community,” he told reporters in New Delhi.
“My attempt is to instill confidence in a community which feels it is under siege in their own country,” he added, presenting Indians as a people living in fear of attacks by Muslim militants.
Footage aired by the NDTV news channel showed Varun saying Muslims “have scary names” and that “if you meet them at night you will be scared.”
The state election authorities have ordered an investigation, and the local police have registered a criminal case and sent the video for examination. Gandhi is a candidate of the opposition Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), whose leaders often stridently promote Hindu causes.
“The video contains outrageous statements,” said Aditi Phadnis, a political analyst. “It’s dreadful. If Varun said all that then obviously what propelled him was the desire to polarize voters along communal lines. He wants to consolidate the Hindu vote behind him.”
A Congress leader demanded that Gandhi be arrested and prosecuted.
Gandhi, 29, is seeking to make his debut entry into parliament from Pilibhit, a constituency long nurtured by his mother, Maneka Gandhi.
In Pilibhit the number of Muslim voters, traditionally hostile to the BJP, has shot up to 420,000, increasing the pressure on Varun Gandhi to mobilize his base.
In the video he is seen telling the audience: “Go to your villages and give the call that all Hindus must unite to save this area from becoming Pakistan.”
He is even heard mocking a rival candidate, a bearded Muslim, calling him Osama bin Laden, and then saying: “America couldn’t get Osama, but Varun Gandhi will catch many after the elections.”
“This is not the ‘hand’ [a reference to the Congress election symbol], this is the hand of the ‘lotus’ [the BJP symbol],” Gandhi is seen as saying, with his palm raised toward the crowd.
“After the election [this hand] will cut the throat of the circumcised [a derogatory colloquial Hindi reference to Muslims]. Hail Lord Ram!”
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