Congress President Rahul Gandhi (PTI file photo)

NEW DELHI: The BJP on Monday continued its onslaught against Rahul Gandhi over his alleged "Congress is a Muslim party" remark with HRD minister Prakash Javadekar accusing the Congress president of being communal and claiming its "divisive" politics had damaged the country.

"Rahul Gandhi's remarks show that Congress is a communal party. Its appeasement politics has damaged the country. History of partition is testimony to this," Javadekar said at a press conference. He further said Congress had a "divisive ideology" and the "only genocide" India had witnessed took place in 1984, when thousands of Sikhs were killed on Congress's watch.

This was the third successive day when BJP fielded a senior minister to attack Rahul for his purported remark fashioning his party as a Muslim outfit. Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman raised the issue first on Friday. Even as Congress contested the report, PM Narendra Modi , at his Azamgarh rally on Saturday, seized upon Rahul's purported remark and referred to Congress's opposition to the bill to criminalise triple talaq to taunt the rival for being partisan towards Muslim men.

Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad too had attacked the Congress for "politics of appeasement".

Javadekar said Rahul's statement had exposed Congress, adding that the opposition party's "appeasement policy" as represented by its disregard for the Supreme Court verdict in Shah Bano case had damaged the country to a great extent earlier and the whole history of partition was also a testimony to this.

Javadekar said Congress's minority cell president Nadeem Javed had justified Rahul's remark and asserted that he was right in saying that Congress was a Muslim party.

Javadekar also referred to the statement of former PM Manmohan Singh that Muslims had first right over resources of the country, as well Congress MP Shashi Tharoor's "Hindu Pakistan" remark and Kerala Congress's decision to cancel its programme to organise recitation of Ramayana.

