Vishal Dadlani resigns as member of AAP after being trapped in a religious controversy

29 Aug 2016

A recent post of musician-singer Vishal Dadlani has left several from the Jain community miffed over his comments on Jain monk Tarun Sagar addressing the Haryana Assembly that he posted on social media. In fact, post that, a police complaint was filed against Vishal who also belongs to the political party AAP.

The said complaint was filed at Shahdara police station in Delhi by the Jain community and followed by the same, Vishal Dadlani also received a lot of backlash from Twitter. Deleting the post, the musician apologized and maintained, "I apologise if I've upset Jain feelings. The intent was to ridicule the merger of religion & governance, and not any religion in particular." He continued to give this response to almost every tweet that criticized his comments and spoke about hurting religious sentiments of the Jains. Being an active member of the AAP party, party leader Arvind Kejriwal too condemned Vishal's comments and took to Twitter to state his opinion saying, "Tarun Sagar ji Maharaj is a very reverred saint, not just for jains but everyone. Those showing disrespect is unfortunate and shud stop." Vishal Dadlani, after receiving flak also decided to walk away from all kinds of political affiliations. He continued to spread this message in a series of tweets adding, "It feel bad that I hurt my Jain friends & my friends @ArvindKejriwal & @SatyendarJain .I hereby quit all active political work/affiliation. A lot is being said against AAP because I chose to quit. I just want to say, AAP is a family. Please keep faith in AK & the party! I made a mistake by offending the peaceful Jain community, and I felt the only way to truly apologise, was to renounce my ego. Neither Arvind, nor anyone else, asked me to quit. I make my own decisions. I made a mistake, & I'm genuinely sorry. That's all. Never forget how hard AK & AAP have fought for all of us. AAP volunteers, stay strong & fight twice as hard. With you all, in spirit. I apologise again, to the Jain Community, & all others offended. But I beg you all not to support religion in governance, for India's sake."