NEW DELHI, April 15: Congress party’s heir apparent Rahul Gandhi and the religious right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were jostling in the searing heat of Uttar Pradesh on Sunday for votes so difficult to secure that both have had to target Pakistan, just in case jingoism helps.

“My family is not one that doesn’t keep its word,” Mr Gandhi told a predominantly Hindu nationalist audience on Saturday in Bareilly, in western Uttar Pradesh. “Once they make a commitment to a cause they stay faithful to it, be it the issue of India’s independence from foreign rule, or the division of Pakistan into two or leading India into the 21st century.”

The reference was to three prime ministers -- Jawaharlal Nehru, a key figure in India’s freedom movement, Indira Gandhi who fought the 1971 war with Pakistan, which led to the creation of Bangladesh and Rajiv Gandhi, credited as the man who led the economic and technological leap in India.

Mr Gandhi had earlier told Muslims in a Madressah in Deoband that the Babri Mosque, demolished by Hindu zealots in December 1992, would be secure had the members of the the Nehru-Gandhi family been in power at the time.

The remarks about the division of Pakistan are seen as a diplomatic embarrassment for Delhi as India has officially maintained it was forced to act militarily in East Pakistan in self defence and not as part of a strategy to dismember the country. The remarks were preceded by another controversy in the Uttar Pradesh polls, also featuring Pakistan.

Senior BJP leaders released a CD which was abusive of Muslims generally. But the propaganda film starts with invectives against Pakistan, describing it as a source of terror aimed against India. The party has since disowned the CD although its more entrenched supporters say there was nothing wrong in targeting Muslims or Pakistan in an election.

Mr Gandhi’s controversial remarks did not deter Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from joining the campaign on Sunday. In his first speech during the current assembly polls, Dr Singh projected the Congress party scion as the new leader, emphasising that he was the future of the state.

“Rahul Gandhi is your future. He is sweating it out for you. Only one chance is needed to make this state a new Uttar Pradesh,” Press Trust of India quoted Dr Singh as saying at the election rally in Afzalgarh.

The BJP was quick to respond to Mr Gandhi’s remarks about Pakistan. BJP spokesperson Prakash Javdekar said the comments reflected a “monarchic mindset” of the Gandhi family.

“What Rahul has been saying is exhibition of monarchic mindset. He thinks of family and nothing but family so he thinks the whole history has been written by Gandhi family. If they want to take the credit of Pakistan’s partition, then they must take the blame of partition of India,” he said.

The multi-stage staggered polls for India’s most populous state, considered to be a key political trophy, will end early next month. Neither the BJP, nor the Congress are thought to have a chance of forming their government there. The main contenders are a Dalit party, the BSP, and the ruling Samajwadi Party of Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, a backward caste leader.

Qudssia Akhlaque adds from Islamabad: The Pakistani government on Sunday declared that India’s ruling party leader Rahul Gandhi’s terming the ‘division’ of Pakistan in 1971 as one of the achievements of his dynasty was an open admission of the Indian attempt to destabilise the country and meddle in its affairs.

Reacting to Rahul Gandhi’s remarks, Foreign Office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam said: “This clearly validates what we have known. We have been saying that India is trying to destabilise Pakistan and interfering in our internal affairs.”

The spokesperson sidestepped a question about whether such statements from Congress leaders could undermine the peace process.