Refusal to wear skull cap is Narendra Modi's signal to Hindutva, says Shashi Tharoor

New Delhi: BJP's prime ministerial nominee Narendra Modi is sending an "unmistakable signal" of his "bias and bigotry" against Muslims to the nation by consistently refusing to wear a skull cap, Congress charged on Saturday.

"It's not as simple that he did not wear a skull cap. That is the only headgear he refuses to wear. He wore all kinds of outlandish headgears including one with a dead bird of endangered specie. He wore the headgear of Nagaland, turban and saafa.

"By not wearing the skull cap, he is sending an unmistakable signal to his hardcore supporters that he will not cater to the needs of this community. He never misses an opportunity to signal his bias and bigotry to the nation," party spokesperson Shashi Tharoor told reporters.

The Congress spokesperson also pointed out that Modi's frequent reference to Rahul Gandhi as "Shehjade", "burqa of secularism" and calling Ahmed Patel as "Miyan Ahmed Patel" are also meant to send this signal about his "very narrow, bigoted framework" of thinking.

He said if Modi wanted to describe Rahul Gandhi as prince, he could have also used the word "Rajkumar" but he uses a word, which seeks to identify a particular community as target.

"Through such things, he wants to give the signal that he will not do anything for minorities. There is a subtext in all remarks of Modi. Modi is signalling that he does not respect the headgear of a community," he said.

His comments came on a day when the BJP's PM candidate insisted that he was prepared to "face defeat" but would not practice politics of identity.

Hitting back at BJP leaders Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley for dubbing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as "just a reader and not a leader", Tharoor said that India does not need "a bleeder or a pleader" as PM.

Tharoor also questioned Jaitley's attack on Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, and said why BJP was targeting a "private individual", who is neither a member of a political party nor a candidate in this Lok Sabha polls.

Tharoor's remark came after Jaitley posted stinging remarks on his blog against Singh and Vadra.

The BJP leader today took potshots at Singh in his blog saying the Prime Minister "walked on snow, but did not leave any footprints", a day after PMO sought to counter the perception that Singh has been "weak" in his tenure,

He wrote that in response to controversy created by two recently published books including the one by PM's former Media Adviser Sanjaya Baru, the PMO has clarified that in the last 10 years, the Prime Minister had delivered around 1,200 speeches.

"The PMO thought that this would counter the charge that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was not a 'speaking' Prime Minister... He must be heard with attention. He must be a leader and not just a reader," Jaitley said.

Targeting Vadra he wrote, "start a business without any investment. Investment will flow as loans and advances which is a synonym for political equity. Use these loans to buy property at fraction of the market cost."

"Congratulations to Mr Robert Vadra. He has made it to the Wall Street Journal. The Vadra business model requires the research paper to be prepared by a key business analyst," Jaitley wrote.

Responding to Jaitley's charge on PM, Tharoor said, "We need a Prime Minister to be a leader and not to be a bleeder, someone who bleeds the nation rather than leading it. We do not need a bleeder or a pleader."

Congress has been using the "bleeder" terminology in an obvious reference to 2002 post-Godhara riots in Gujarat, which it has been raking up to target Modi for quite some time.

Regarding Jaitley's attack on Vadra, he said, "I am astonished that BJP such high respect for the foreign press... Vadra is a private individual and not a candidate in these elections.

He said that BJP was resorting to this to counter the strong campaign by the Gandhis against him.

Asking BJP to focus on political opponents and not private individuals, he said that if any one has violated the law, legal process will naturally take place.

On Sanjay Barus' book, Tharoor said there were fundamental contradictions in it and while Baru hails the Prime Minister's qualities and virtues in UPA-I, when he was Singh's media advisor, he suddenly finds that the PM is subservient PM in UPA-II, when he was not in the PMO.

"Let us not overreact to a commercially well-timed book," which he said is an "outsider's comments grafted on an insider's account" as Baru was "not an insider in 2008".