Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday jumped into the debate sparked by Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on the origins of the popular nationalist slogan ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’.

Reaching out to the minority community in this Muslim-dominated north Kerala district, the chief minister had said Muslim rulers, cultural icons and officials had played a significant role in the country’s history and independence movement.

Drawing examples from history to prove his point, Vijayan had said the slogans ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ and ‘Jai Hind’ were first raised by two Muslims and asked whether the Sangh Parivar would be ready to abandon them.

“Therefore, I want to say that the Sangh Parivar who says Muslims should leave India, they should be sent to Pakistan, they should understand this history.”

Reacting to Vijayan’s remarks, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor echoed similar sentiments and said, “The fact is that we used to be a country where such distinctions did not matter so much, where indeed someone like Netaji Bose had amongst his closest aides people of every faith.”

“He was accompanied by a Muslim Colonel in the fatal plane crash. That is the gentleman who had coined the phrase ‘Jai Hind’ for him,” Tharoor said, referring to the officer of Bose’s Indian National Army (INA), Abid Hasan.

“Earlier, ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ goes back to the Muslim aide of a Hindu Peshwa. So, that’s the way our country used to work. We were not always drawing distinction on the basis of religion,” the Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram added.

He argued against reducing historical events to binary divisions based on religion and urged for a more nuanced understanding of India’s rich and diverse heritage.

“When you think of something like the Battle of Haldighati, who was fighting for the Maharana? Hakim Khan Sur, a Muslim general. Who was fighting for the Mughal Emperor? It was a Rajput King. You have to understand that our history is much more complicated than the black-and-white versions that someone in the BJP or Hindutva movement would like you to believe,” Tharoor told ANI.