Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today castigated Prime Minister Narendra Modi for allegedly "maintaining a stoic silence" on the Dadri lynching incident for too long when it threatened to snowball into a volatile situation.
In a statement here today, the Chief Minister said, "Modi who is vociferous and speaks out his mind on every issue under the sun, astonishingly maintained a stoic silence on the Dadri incident that threatened to create a rift in society on communal lines."
"The President (Pranab Mukherjee) who rarely intervenes had to step in to douse the flames that threatened to suck the country into the vortex of communal cauldron," Gogoi asserted.
"Thanks to President's timely intervention and soothing balm that helped to contain the situation at a time when the Prime Minister looked the other way round with the situation threatening to drift to a point of no return," he said.
"It is rare to see the President giving clear cut message to the government with the Prime Minister looking the other way round. That gave a wrong impression that the Modi-led government at the Centre was insensitive and unmindful of the situation with nefarious forces at work to spread communal disharmony, hatred, malice and ill-will among communities," Gogoi said.
At an election rally in Bihar yesterday, Modi had pitched for communal harmony and brotherhood in the country, saying Hindus and Muslims should work together to fight poverty and ignore "irresponsible" statements made by politicians.
In his first comments amid communal overtones in the wake of Dadri lynching incident, he invoked the President, saying the countrymen should follow his message given a day earlier on preserving the core civilisational values of diversity, tolerance and plurality.
Mukherjee, while addressing a function, had said, "I firmly believe that we cannot allow the core values of our civilisation to be wasted and the core values is what, over the years, the civilisation celebrated diversity, promoted and advocated tolerance, endurance and plurality."
The President's statement came in the wake of lynching of a 50-year-old man in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, by an enraged mob over rumours that he stored and consumed beef, which has sparked an outrage across the country.
