'Bhagat Singh A Kanhaiya? Then Gandhis Are...?' BJP Asks Shashi Tharoor

New Delhi: Congress leader Shashi Tharoor clarified today that he had not intended to equate Kanhaiya Kumar, the student recently arrested on charges of sedition at Jawaharlal Nehru University or JNU, with freedom fighter Bhagat Singh.

"It was a girl in the audience (at JNU) who mentioned Bhagat Singh, and I said that Bhagat Singh was a Kanhaiya by which I meant he was a young man in his twenties with Marxist ideas and beliefs who had a great passion for the motherland and Kanhaiya had the same qualities ...it's nothing more than that," Mr Tharoor, a parliamentarian from Kerala, said to reporters.

The BJP disagreed. "If Kanhaiya is Bhagat Singh, what are Sonia and Rahul Gandhi?" asked the party's Shahnawaz Hussain, referring to Mr Tharoor's party bosses. "The way the Congress is making anti-national slogans, even Gandhi and Nehru would be upset seeing all this," he claimed.
 Mr Tharoor spoke over the weekend to students at JNU, which has turned into the precinct of a national debate over free speech after the arrest of three students including Mr Kumar who are accused of making anti-national remarks at an event on campus last month. The politician's comment on Bhagat Singh had him trending on Twitter.

"Bhagat Singh was fighting colonial rule and foreign oppression and Kanhaiya is fighting for his beliefs in a very different democracy. So the situations are different but the comparison (was)-young, Marxist, idealist, passionately committed to their motherland in their 20's...that's all," he said in explanation today.

In his speech, Mr Tharoor told his JNU audience that while he does not support some of the slogans that were shouted during February's university event, they cannot be equated with sedition. "Some of the slogans supposedly raised that night did bother me and many good people in this country. But India is not so weak that a few irresponsible slogans by misguided students can destroy it," he said.