Jaitley hit by Wikibomb, says words not his

BJP leader Arun Jaitley today trashed a US embassy cable, released by WikiLeaks, in which an American diplomat purportedly wrote that Jaitley had remarked during a meeting that Hindu nationalism was an "opportunistic" issue.

The BJP was caught in a fresh furore over the WikiLeaks cables. One cable showed a US diplomat quoting Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley as telling him that Hindu nationalism is an “opportunistic issue” for his party.

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Jaitley quickly denied that he had used the word “opportunistic” in reference to Hindutva, which could be the “diplomat's own usage.”

In a statement, Jaitley said the cable by the diplomat in 2005 makes a reference to his conversation with him, “the cable reflects my views on cross-border terrorism, illegal infiltration from Bangladesh and the unfair denial of US visa to the Gujarat chief minister (Narendra Modi). However, the use of the word “opportunistic” in reference to nationalism or Hindu nationalism is neither my view nor my language. It could be the diplomat’s own usage.”

But the Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said, “Chickens are coming to roost, what goes out wrongly hits back like a boomerang. People living in glass houses are taught in this manner that they were to throw stones at others.”

Defending Jaitley, BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said, “We have not denied the existence of talks between Jaitley and Robert Blake, the charge at the US Embassy in 2005. Neither are we saying that the cables are not verified or unverifiable. But an erroneous impression has been created that the word opportunistic was used by Jaitley.”