With an eye to turning around his political fortunes in the state of Gujarat, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo Arvind Kejriwal has begun his temple run to woo the state’s Hindu residents and get them to vote for the “Jhaadu” this time.
On Tuesday (July 26), he visited the famous Somnath temple in Prabhas Patan near Veraval town of Gujarat. The Delhi Chief Minister offered prayers at the Hindu temple and later used the opportunity for media interaction and a photo session.
While playing on the ‘soft Hindutva’ card, the official Twitter handle of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) posted an image of Arvind Kejriwal wearing a ‘rudraksha’ garland. The party supremo was also seen with a vermillion paste on his forehead.
In a bid to sway Hindu voters, AAP also uploaded a video of the Somnath temple on its official Twitter channel.
हर-हर शंभू, शिव महादेवा 🙏🏻🕉️ pic.twitter.com/ksUFitplbl
— AAP (@AamAadmiParty) July 26, 2022
Interestingly, Arvind Kejriwal has been the frontrunner in downplaying atrocities committed against the Hindu community and mocking their religious beliefs.
From downplaying atrocities against Hindus to insulting Hindu symbols: A brief overview of Kejriwal’s chequered history
In March this year, Arvind Kejriwal mocked the genocide of Hindus during his address in the Delhi assembly under the pretext of criticising Vivek Agnihotri’s movie ‘The Kashmir Files.’
He had insinuated that the plot is not grounded in reality and that it is a “jhoothi” (fake) film.
CM @ArvindKejriwal to BJP:#TheKashmirFiles जैसी झूठी Picture के Poster लगाते हुए अच्छे नहीं लगते, शोभा नहीं देता.. pic.twitter.com/F25DddaZlH
— AAP (@AamAadmiParty) March 24, 2022
The AAP supremo had earlier tried to rebrand himself as a ‘Hanuman bhakt’. At that time, netizens pointed out how he derided Hindu sentiments to make a political statement.
When leftists had attacked ABVP students over semester form at Jawaharlal Nehru University in January 2020, Kejriwal shared an objectionable cartoon. The graphic showed a belligerent Lord Hanuman setting the university campus on fire.
Really? pic.twitter.com/PdC1bgJLFm
— Ankur Singh (@iAnkurSingh) March 10, 2021
Ahead of the 2019 general elections, Kejriwal shared an image where a man with a broom was seen hitting the Swastika symbol. The seasoned politician shares the derogatory image, despite being well-aware of the sanctity of the symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
In August 2020, the official Twitter handle of AAP shared pictures of Kanchenjunga in Sikkim, Kamet Peak, and Nanda Devi hills in Uttarakhand and drew analogies with a humongous landfill at Ghazipur in Delhi.
The contentious tweet was accompanied by the caption, “Highest Mountains of India.”
In 2018, the AAP supremo deliberately drew false equivalences between building universities and temples to suggest that the construction of the latter would undermine development in the country.
“I was thinking what would have happened if Jawaharlal Nehru built temples instead of the Steel Authority of India? Would India have developed after Independence?” he said during a public address, mocking the construction of Ram Mandir.
Even in 2014, he tried to trick Hindus into guilty for supposedly demanding the construction of Ram Mandir atop the debris of a mosque.
Despite being at the helm of mocking Hindu sentiments, Arvind Kejriwal harps on ‘soft Hindutva’ prior to elections in Hindu majority States. His latest visit to the Somnath temple is part of the same ploy to win the hearts of Hindu voters, ahead of the Gujarat Vidhan Sabha polls.
