Panaji, Jun 20 (IANS): Nationalism is the soul of the BJPs ideology and the very oxygen which fuels India, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari said on Saturday in a virtual rally to address party workers in Goa.
Gadkari also said that the party was not against the minorities, alleging that repeated attempts were being made to project the BJP as an anti-minority party.
"We are not against minorities, but we are nationalists. Nationalism is our soul and the oxygen of our country, that is our belief," Gadkari said, as he blamed Pakistan for creating rifts between the Hindu and Muslim communities in the country.
"We have fought wars with Pakistan on three occasions. In all three wars, we defeated Pakistan. Pakistan realised that they cannot defeat India in a war. So they started exporting terrorists," Gadkari said.
"They executed bomb blasts in India, in which innocent persons were killed. The effort was to create a rift and struggle between Hindus and Muslims, which would destroy India," he also said.
The Union Minister also said Communism as an ideology is finished in China and Russia and Kerala's Left Democratic Front government may go down in history as the last Communist government.
Gadkari further said that BJP's pursuit of the 'Antodaya' principle laid down by the party's founder Deen Dayal Upadhyay could prove to be the economic model which the world needs with the decline in Communist, Socialist and Capitalist economic models.
"Importantly, Communists are finished in Russia and China. What they have adopted is actually a capitalist and a liberal economic model, on the lines of the US economic model," Gadkari said.
The Chinese city of Shanghai, he said, was in fact developed by wealthy industrialists of Mongolian descent, who invested in China after the economy was liberalised.
"China developed Shanghai by utilising that investment," Gadkari said.
Communism, Gadkari said, was of no use to the world because there could be no economic development based on the ideology.
"Today Communist ideology is finished... Tripura had a Communist regime. We did not have a single MLA there. But in the last state Assembly elections, we won full majority and ousted the Lefist hegemony in Tripura," Gadkari said.
"Although there is a Communist government in place in Kerala now, the state will be known to have the last Communist government in the history of Communism," the Union Minister said.