BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur who is an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case that killed six people made a hate-filled speech against Muslims in Karnataka on Sunday, December 25, and asked for Hindus to keep sharp weapons ready at home to ‘counter love jihad’. Speaking at a Hindu Jagarana Vedike event in Karnataka’s Shivamogga, Pragya Thakur said, “We know how to sacrifice and we also know how to kill.”
Speaking at the group’s south region annual convention, Pragya Thakur called on Hindus to keep the knives in their homes sharp in order to be able to “cut enemies’ faces and heads.” She urged Hindus to protect their girls from ‘love jihad’, a bogey term used by right-wing groups to propagate a false theory that Muslim men deliberately ‘trap’ and marry Hindu women to convert them to Islam. Speaking about countering ‘love jihad’, she urged Hindus to keep weapons at home.
She also referred to Bajrang Dal leader Harsha’s murder in Shivamogga and alleged that ‘they’ had attacked Hindu ‘heroes’ and activists of Bajrang Dal, BJP and Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) with knives, and therefore Hindus ‘must also sharpen our knives’. “If nothing else, keep the knife used for chopping vegetables sharp. I’m telling you clearly. Our homes too must have sharp vegetable cutting knives… We don't know when what kind of opportunity will arise. When our vegetables can be cut well, then certainly, enemies’ faces and heads can also be cut well,” Pragya Thakur said.
Pragya also advised parents against educating their children in institutions run by Christian missionaries, claiming that it would turn the children selfish and lead them to lose touch with their culture. She said, “By doing it (sending children to “missionary” schools), you will open the doors of old age homes for yourselves."
Keep the edge of the knife sharp, you never know when the opportunity will come: Pragya Thakur#pragyathakur pic.twitter.com/Od3k2BCaKO
— (@kapilkumaron) December 26, 2022
However, it was Pragya Thakur's comments about ‘retaliation’ that evoked the most disapproval. She said that it was no longer the time for ‘sacrifice’, but for ‘retaliation’. The MP’s statements have been widely condemned for promoting hatred and violence. Her comments are particularly disturbing given the current climate of communal tensions in Karnataka, with reports of increasing violence and discrimination against Muslims.
Pragya Thakur is known for making communal and Islamophobic statements. In November 2019, she landed in a major controversy when she called Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse a patriot. She was also arrested in 2009 in connection with the Malegaon bomb case in Maharashtra, in which an explosive device mounted on a bike allegedly linked to the MP detonated next to a mosque, resulting in the deaths of six people and the injury of over 100 others.