A major controversy brewed on Thursday over Congress leader Shashi Tharoor's remarks that a Hindu Pakistan would be created if the BJP returns to power with the Congress asking him to be restrained after the saffron party attacked him. The Thiruvananthapuram MP, however, refused to retract saying the BJP-RSS idea of a Hindu Rashtra remained the mirror image of the neighbouring "intolerant theocratic state".

"I have said this before and I will say it again. Pakistan was created as a state with a dominant religion that discriminates against its minorities and denies them equal rights. India never accepted the logic that had partitioned the country. But the BJP-RSS idea of a Hindu Rashtra is the mirror image of Pakistan — a state with a dominant majority religion that seeks to put its minorities in a subordinate place. "That would be a Hindu Pakistan and it is not what our freedom movement was fought for, nor the idea of India enshrined in our Constitution," Tharoor wrote on Facebook.