A Majority Of Muslims In India Are Descendants Of Hindus, Says BJP MP

New Delhi: A majority of Muslims in India have descended from Hindus, a BJP lawmaker said in parliament today.

Speaking in the Lok Sabha during a debate on mob violence, BJP lawmaker Hukumdev Narayan Yadav quoted icon Deen Dayal Upadhyaya as saying that Muslims are descendants of Hindus. "Muslims of this nation should know that their ancestors were Hindus...and at that time Hindu gods were theirs," he said.

Every Muslim, the lawmaker added, must respect Hindu sentiment and Hindus must also respect Muslims.

Mr Yadav hit out at the Congress and other opposition parties for targeting the central government over mob attacks, asserting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had repeatedly come out strongly against these incidents. "Some people are indulging in terror (atankvadi) activities to defame the government," he said.

The MP from Bihar's Madhubani was severely critical of the Congress and said "I will prefer to die than bow before the Congress...Some politicians sit with the Congress and have Biryani and then pretend to fight outside."

The MP raised the killing in Left-ruled Kerala of a worker of the BJP's ideological mentor RSS and also the 1984 anti-Sikh riots when the Congress was in power. The responsibility of containing such violence was that of state governments, he said.

Mr Yadav said a fight between two ideologies had been on for decades and asserted that those who followed the path of "economic development and nationalism" would come out victorious.

With inputs from PTI