India’s main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BPJ), has ‘regretted’ the transformation of Nepal into a secular state from the world’s only Hindu nation after a declaration of the Nepalese parliament.
BJP leader Jaswant Singh told the Rajya Sabha, the lower chamber of the Indian parliament, on Friday that he “feels diminished” to see the death of the Hindu Kingdom and called the transformation “unfortunate”, official news agency PTI said.
PTI quoted another BJP leader VK Malhotra as saying, “While it is for the people of Nepal to decide on the kind of government they want. What was the need to scrap the word Hindu from its name?”
“Nepal’s Hindu identity has nothing to do with the monarchy. The Nepalese Parliament should not have omitted that word. There are over 50 countries in the world who proudly call themselves as Islamic Republic,” Malhotra insisted while addressing a press briefing.
On a question if he questions the secular status of India, Malhotra said there is “no difference between Hinduism and secularism” and that “nobody can deny that India is a Hindu-majority state”, PTI said.
The Indian opposition party’s reaction comes at a time when the parliamentary proclamation declaring Nepal as a security state is welcomed by all sides including the international community.
The BJP, which is supported by various semi-political fundamentalist Hindu religious groups, is the only prominent Indian political party to officially criticize the Nepalese parliament’s decision on Thursday to turn Nepal into a secular state.