Congress today said Narendra Modi's 'shamshan-kabristan' remark doesn't behove the Prime Minister's post and termed as "worrying" the BJP's bid to tailor the national discourse to its views.
Congress leader Manish Tewari also said that he feels Manmohan Singh was not a "weak" Prime Minister but for some "strange reasons", during the second term of the UPA government, he decided not to assert himself.
"I will try and be non-partisan, but unfortunately when you are seeing the Prime Minister of the country bringing down the discourse to 'shamshan' and 'kabristan', it does not really augur well for the institution of the PM," he said at a book launch event here.
"It is one thing when you are campaigning to become the PM and it's another thing when you are the PM," he said.
"Therefore, when you speak as the PM, in every action, every articulation of yours, that statesmanship should come out," Tewari, a former Union information and broadcasting minister, said.
During a poll rally in Uttar Pradesh, Modi had stressed that there should be no discrimination on the basis of caste and religion. "If there is electricity in graveyard and during Ramzan, it must also be available in a crematorium and during Diwali," Modi had said.
Tewari said that he feels that there has been a "concerted attempt" to try and adjust the national discourse after the BJP came to power.
"What happened in FTII-Pune, what's happening in the censor board, what is being played out in the universities... It's a premeditated, concerted attempt to adjust the national discourse and that's the most worrying tendency," he said.
Responding to questions, Tewari also said, "My personal take is that Manmohan Singh was not a weak Prime Minister."
"Had he been a weak PM, he wouldn't have gone ahead with the civil nuclear deal. For some strange reasons, he decided, during the second term of the UPA, not to assert himself," he said.
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Responding to another question, Tewari said, "Possibly, a coalition government suits us much better than the single party government."
Referring to the present situation where the BJP as a single party has majority in the Lok Sabha, Twari said that over the last 33 months all power is concentrated in the Prime Minister or possibly the president of the ruling party.
"Therefore, the emasculation of the cabinet system is possibly not the best thing for India at this juncture. Maybe, the era of coalitions, howsoever difficult they may be to handle, possibly suits the diversity of India much better," he added.
