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Giriraj Singh
Giriraj Singh is a senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and the Minister of Rural Development and the Minister of Panchayati Raj in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet. Singh is known for his vitriolic and hate speeches against Muslims and Christians.
In 2014, while targeting the Muslim community, Singh said that most of the terrorists in the country are from one particular religion.
In 2016, he proposed a population control law to keep Muslim population in check.
“Hindus should have two sons, Muslims, too, should have two sons. Our population is coming down. Bihar has seven such districts where our population has gone down. Population rules have to be changed, only then will our daughters be safe. Otherwise, like Pakistan, we too will have to keep our daughters under the veil,” he said.
In 2019, during an election rally, he questioned the patriotism of Muslims and said:
“Those who cannot say Vande Mataram or cannot respect the motherland, the nation will never forgive them.”
Singh played a huge role in igniting the anti-Muslim violence in Delhi in February 2020. Two days before the anti-Muslim riots began Singh said Muslims should have been sent to Pakistan in 1947 during the partition of India.
Some of his controversial statements:
“It is the time to commit ourselves to the nation. Before 1947, [Muhammad Ali] Jinnah pushed for an Islamic nation. It was a big lapse by our ancestors that we’re paying the price for. If at that time Muslim brothers had been sent there and Hindus brought here, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
“I have said earlier that Deoband is the Gangotri of terrorists. All most wanted terrorists of the world came from Deoband, including Hafiz Saeed or any of the others. These people are not against CAA, they are against India. This is a kind of a Khilafat movement.”
References:
https://thewire.in/politics/giriraj-singh-muslims-1947-caa-protests