NEW DELHI, June 9: The Congress leader and former Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah has sparked a controversy by comparing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders with dogs.
“When I talk individually, 25 people from BJP start barking against me like Mudhol (hound) dogs. But when they bark, only I have to speak, no one else from our party speaks,” said Siddaramaiah, speaking at an event in Mysore. “Our people don’t talk, and that’s why we have distributed books from our office,” said Siddaramaiah.
The former chief minister also participated in a protest by the Karnataka Congress at the Vidhan Soudha against the alleged “saffronisation” of textbooks in the state and that their protests would continue till the government rolled back the revised textbooks. “The textbook has been revised by Rohith Chakrathirtha (head of the textbook revision committee), who is an orthodox RSS man. I hope the government will consider revising it, if not, we will go to the streets,” said Siddaramaiah in Bengaluru on Thursday.
Mudhol Hound, also known as Caravan Hound, is commonly used by villagers in Karnataka for hunting and as guard dogs. The Karnataka government textbook revision committee set up in 2020 headed by writer Rohith Chakrathirtha, recently revised social science textbooks from Classes 6 to 10 and Kannada language textbooks from Classes 1 to 10.
(Manas Dasgupta)
