Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray on Saturday said his party will part ways with the Bharatiya Janata Party if the latter continued to distance itself from the Hindutva agenda.
"We share a friendship with BJP based on the Hindutva issue. Though there still are hardcore Hindutva believers in the BJP, we hope an occasion will not arise when we have to say we were friends once," Thackeray said in a front-page interview in the party mouthpiece Saamna.
"There is ideological confusion within the BJP on the issue of [Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali] Jinnah," he said.
"Jinnah cannot be termed secular as he did not even protest the bloodshed during the Partition," Thackeray said.
BJP chief Lal Kishenchand Advani had resigned earlier this month after coming under attack from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its allied bodies for his comments praising Jinnah.
Though Advani withdrew the resignation after appeals from the party, RSS and its allied organisations continue to criticise him for diluting the party's ideology.
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