BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj asks Hindus to be armed with arrows, bottles to deal with ‘jihadis’

Bharatiya Janata Party MP Sakshi Maharaj on Sunday asked Hindus to keep bows and arrows ready in their homes as the police will not help them in dealing with a mob he referred to as jihadis.

The Lok Sabha legislator, who has often made controversial comments, posted a picture on Facebook of men wearing skull caps charging down a street armed with sticks.

“If this crowd comes suddenly in your street-neighborhood or your house, then do you have some remedy to save yourself [from them]?” Maharaj asked in the Facebook post.

He added: “If not then make some arrangement because the police will not come to save you. When these people [the mob] will return after doing jihad, the police will come to beat their sticks and after a few days the matter will end after going to an investigation committee.”

For “these guests”, every house should have one or two boxes of cold drinks and some arrows, the MP said. “This message is not for one state but for the whole country,” Maharaj added. “Jai Shri Ram.”

The BJP leader, who has over 30 criminal cases filed against him, told PTI that he completely agrees with his post. “Are Hindus only to take a beating?” he responded when asked about his remarks.

The developments came in the backdrop of communal clashes in Delhi’s Jahangirpuri on April 16. This violence in the national Capital follows dozens of communal riots that had erupted across the country over this month.

Past comments

Before this, Maharaj had claimed in 2014 that madrasas teach students terrorism and “love jihad” – a conspiracy theory espoused by Hindutva activists claiming that Muslim men lure Hindu women to marry them in order to later convert them to Islam.

In the same year, he had described Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse as a patriot.

In 2015, he had asked Hindu women to protect their religion by producing at least four children. He had also declared that cow slaughter and conversion to Islam and Christianity would soon be punishable by death.

In 2017, the MP had also said that those “with four wives and 40 children are responsible for population explosion in the country”. He was referring to Muslims.