After a variety of statements on Lord Hanuman from the ruling BJP, Congress leader Raj Babbar has come up with one. This one's a warning to the BJP to stop speaking on the popular god.
"The BJP should understand that they should not bother Lord Hanuman, a swipe of his tail left them without three states, now your Lanka will be on fire," said Raj Babbar, the Uttar Pradesh Congress chief, on Monday.
Taunting the BJP after his party snatched three heartland states in recent elections, Raj Babbar referenced an episode from the epic Ramayana in which Hanuman set fire to demon King Ravana's Lanka with his tail.
In the past few days, Lord Hanuman has been linked to various castes.
Last week, a BJP leader in Uttar Pradesh said he was Muslim. Then another BJP leader, minister Laxmi Narayan Chaudhary, said he was a "jat" as he had traits similar to the Jat community.
"I think Hanuman ji was a jat, because when a jat sees someone in trouble, he (like Lord Hanuman) jumps in without knowing the issue or the people," the minister told news agency ANI.
Before that, Bukkal Nawab, a councillor with the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh, insisted that Lord Hanuman was a Muslim and offered bizarre logic. "That is why the names of the people in Islam are almost similar to lord Hanuman, whether it is Rehman, Ramzan, Farman, Zeeshan and Qurban. Such types of names are found in Islam only," he said.
Former BJP parliamentarian Savitri Bai Phule had earlier called Lord Hanuman a Dalit.
The comments on Lord Hanuman started after Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, was accused of calling Lord Hanuman a Dalit and playing on Hanuman's caste for votes in Rajasthan. But Yogi Adityanath's supporters said his speech had been distorted and misinterpreted.
