The Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday was cornered by BJP Karnataka over the Lingayat issue, with the latter tweeting out a video which supposedly exposes the former’s hypocrisy over the matter.
Back in March, the Congress government in Karnataka had recommended that the Lingayat community, be given a separate minority religion tag, thereby separating them from the mainstream Hindu religion. This recommendation was seen by many as being a divide and conquer policy by the Congress party, in a desperate bid to retain power in the southern state.
This “Lingayats are not Hindu” stance of the Siddaramaiah led Congress government has now suffered a blow in form of the Karnataka Chief Minister himself contradicting the narrative, in a video put out by the Karnataka BJP twitter account:
‘See, Lingayat religion is given minority tag. But it comes under Hindu thing only’.
CM @siddaramaiah, who declared Lingayats as not being Hindu, admitting sheepishly on camera that Lingayats belong to Hindu fold.
Like a thief caught red handed, he gets caught in his own words pic.twitter.com/fSZu4ZGe3L
— BJP Karnataka (@BJP4Karnataka) April 26, 2018
In the video shared by BJP Karnataka, Siddaramaiah while talking about the minority tag given to the Lingayat community, immediately contradicts himself by commenting that the community too comes under the Hindu fold.
Such an admission by Siddaramaiah raises the question as to why did the Congress government try to cast the Lingayats as some separate religious entity when by their own leader’s admission, they are part of Hinduism.
Also, this tweet by the BJP Karnataka twitter account isn’t the only time they have taken social media by storm. We had reported how controversial ‘celebrity’ Raghu Ram was thumped by a tweet from the account when he tried to abusively attack them.
This has been followed by various witty and tongue-in-cheek remarks from the handle, thereby making it pretty well known on social media.
