Congress calls Savarkar 'traitor' as it hails Bhagat Singh's martyrdom

New Delhi: A tweet on the Indian National Congress` official Twitter handle @INCIndia has called right wing ideologue V.D. Savarkar a `traitor` while celebrating the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh.

Juxtaposing a picture of Bhagat Singh and Savarkar, titled "Martyrs and Traitors", the tweet gives an excerpt of the petitions below each picture that Savarkar and Bhagat Singh respectively wrote to the British colonial authorities from jail.

शहीदों की चिताओं पर लगेेंगे हर बरस मेले
वतन पर मरने वालों का यही बाकी निशां होगा pic.twitter.com/hpcbjTqg1Z — INC India (@INCIndia) March 23, 2016

Bhagat Singh`s last petition that he wrote from Lahore Jail in 1931 reads: "There exists a state of war between the British Nation and the Indian Nation, and secondly, we had participated in that war and were therefore war prisoners."

The excerpt from Savarkar`s petition that he wrote in 1913 from the Cellular Jail in Andamans reads: "Therefore, if the government in their manifold beneficence and mercy release me, I for one cannot but be the staunchest advocate of constitutional progress and loyalty to the English government which is the foremost condition of that progress."

The tweet came on the martyrdom day of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev who were executed on March 23, 1931 by the British.