Bengaluru: Another Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader in poll-bound Karnataka on Tuesday stoked a controversy by asking people not to vote for Muslim leaders, whom he likened to Tipu Sultan, the 18th century ruler of Mysore kingdom.
BJP legislator Basangouda Patil Yatnal invoked Tipu Sultan while addressing a rally in Vijayapura.
“All MLAs ask me, in your constituency there are one lakh Tipu Sultans (Muslim votes), how a Shivaji Maharaj’s descendant won from Bijapur,” Yatnal said in Kannada. “Going forward in Bijapur, none of the followers of Tipu Sultan will win.”
He added: “Even by mistake you should not cast your votes for Muslims.”
Karnataka will go to assembly elections this summer and over the past few months Tipu Sultan has taken the centre stage in political discourse in the state, with leaders from various parties invoking the 18th Mysore ruler in one way or another.
Earlier this month, BJP Karnataka president Nalin Kumar Kateel fanned a controversy saying the upcoming assembly elections was all about “Tipu versus Savarkar (the Hindutva ideologue)”.
Targeting the opposition Congress at a rally in Koppal district on February 9, Kateel said: “This (assembly) election is all about Tipu vs Savarkar. They (Congress) allowed celebrating Tipu Jayanti which is not required, and spoke disgracefully about Savarkar. I challenge (Congress leader and former CM) Siddaramaiah to discuss if our country needs a patriotic like Savarkar or Tipu.”
Another BJP leader and state’s higher education minister CN Ashwath Narayan earlier this month triggered a controversy saying Siddaramaiah should be “finished off” just like Tipu Sultan was.
He, however, later expressed regret over his statement after it faced backlash from several leaders. “What I meant by using the phrase was that we should ensure the defeat of the Congress in the next election. I don’t have any personal differences with Siddaramaiah. I have only political and ideological differences,” the minister said on February 16. “If he is hurt by my statement, I express regret.”
Meanwhile, the descendants of Tipu Sultan have slammed both BJP and the Congress for using his name and trying to polarise votes ahead of the elections. “While BJP is trying to project Tipu Sultan as a villain, the Congress is trying to project him as a hero to gain the votes of his admirers,” Sahebzada Mansoor Ali, the seventh-generation descendant of Tipu Sultan, had said.