What has Centre got to do with Dadri killing, Ghulam Ali concert row, asks Narendra Modi

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday described the Dadri lynching and the move to stop Pakistani musician Ghulam Ali’s Mumbai concert as “undesirable and unfortunate”, but also made it clear the Centre had nothing to do with this, and said the Opposition was indulging in “pseudo-secularism” and the politics of “polarisation”.

He said the Opposition was using the minorities as a votebank, raising the bogey of communalism. “The Dadri incident or the opposition to the Pakistani singer is undesirable and unfortunate. But what has the Centre got to do with these incidents”, Mr Modi said in an interview with the Bengali newspaper.

This is the first time the PM has spoken directly about the Dadri incident, where a Muslim man was killed over rumours of storing beef, though last week he made a strong pitch that Hindus and Muslims should not fight each other, but fight together against poverty. He had also whole-heartedly supported President Pranab Mukherjee’s call to maintain India’s core values of tolerance and mutual respect.

This was also Mr Modi’s first public reaction to the cancellation of the ghazal concert by the acclaimed Pakistani singer due to threats by the Shiv Sena, a BJP ally, to disrupt the event last week in Mumbai.