Criticism
The term has been called as a "myth" by the journalist Balbir Punj who claims that the term is an invention of the Indian National Congress party to demonise their political opposition as "terrorists". Similar views have been expressed by other journalists in India Bahukutumbi Raman, former head of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), criticised the term as a tool for political posturing toward the Muslim minority.< Kanchan Gupta and Swapan Dasgupta, have accused investigators of leaking statements about saffron terror to the media to promote the agenda of the Congress. Raman accused the media of measuring Muslim and Hindu suspects by different yardsticks.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) president, Rajnath Singh, denounced claims of Hindu terrorists as "vilification of Hindu saints and army officers in the name of Hindu terrorism". In 2010, the internet whistleblower organization WikiLeaks released documents attesting to some leaders of the Indian National Congress alleging involvement of Hindu right-wing groups in the death of ATS chief Hemant Karkare during the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. The cable concluded that such allegations were being used for electoral gains. The term "Saffron Terror" was prominently used by some Congress party members in this campaign, most prominently by Digvijay Singh. The BJP criticised these statements and filed a complaint with the Election Commission of India citing it as a violation of the Model Code of Conduct for guidance of political parties. The Election Commission issued a show-cause notice to Digvijay Singh on this complaint. Hindu spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has also criticized the usage of the term, saying that it is a myth and insult to Hindu religion, which he said is the most tolerant religion.
The main opposition party BJP accused the government of targeting Hindus.
Read more about this topic: Saffron Terror
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“A friend of mine spoke of books that are dedicated like this: “To my wife, by whose helpful criticism ...” and so on. He said the dedication should really read: “To my wife. If it had not been for her continual criticism and persistent nagging doubt as to my ability, this book would have appeared in Harper’s instead of The Hardware Age.””
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)