'Dog-whistle politics': BJP slams Mamata for her support to J&K CM over Martyrs' Day

New Delhi: The BJP on Monday accused West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of indulging in "dog-whistle politics" with an eye on "Islamist vote banks".

This came after Banerjee slammed the alleged house arrest of her Jammu and Kashmir counterpart Omar Abdullah and his ministers, calling it "unfortunate" and said it amounted to snatching the democratic rights of citizens.

Abdullah and several leaders of the National Conference and opposition parties were allegedly put under house arrest on Sunday to prevent them from going to the Naqshband Sahib graveyard in Srinagar to mark Martyrs' Day.

A defiant Abdullah, however, on Monday scaled the gates of the graveyard to pay tributes to the 22 people killed by the Dogra army on July 13, 1931.

Flaying Banerjee's remarks, BJP co-incharge for West Bengal Amit Malviya said the her support for Abdullah's call to observe July 13 as Martyrs' Day is not about remembrance.

"It's about deliberate appeasement, historical distortion, and dog-whistle politics aimed at Islamist vote banks," he said in a post on X.

Malviya alleged that July 13 marked the "first organized communal riot" in Kashmir,” "a violent, Islamist uprising" against the state, its institutions, and, "most tragically, against innocent Hindus".

It was an assault on the "idea of India," he alleged.

"The real goal was to assert Islamic dominance, challenge the Dogra Hindu monarchy, and fracture Kashmir's delicate communal balance," the BJP leader claimed.

He further alleged that this incident became the "starting point of radical Islamist separatism" in the Valley and accused "Abdullah family, from Sheikh to Omar", of repeatedly trying to "repackage" it as "martyrdom".

"And now, Mamata Banerjee seeks to legitimise this false narrative, an act offensively reminiscent of Direct Action Day,“ 16 August 1946, in Kolkata," he charged.

Malviya alleged that Banerjee's support to Abdullah's call is not about honouring freedom fighters but "whitewashing Islamist violence, flirting with separatism, and playing to a vote bank,” even if it means igniting historical wounds".

"Now, she wants to unleash similar civilisational terror on Bengal," he charged.

Malviya also alleged that TMC leaders, councillors, MLAs, and MPs are "actively enabling and spreading violence and intimidation to engineer demographic change" in West Bengal, from Malda to Murshidabad, Basirhat, Deganga, Itahar, and Howrah.

"But history remembers. And so will Bharat," he said.