New Delhi: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday said that "Hindu rashtra project" being promoted in the name of nationalism which would be a fundamental betrayal of India's past and its constitutional values.Tharoortook on Prime Minister Narednra Modi over his "silence" on cow vigilantism and "rising intolerance" in the country.

People, he alleged, are being made to go through an "acid test", and those who do not agree to utter "Bharat Mata Ki Jai" at the insistence of the government are being victimised.

"They (the ruling dispensation) are betraying the central Hindu value of tolerance which has given us six and half decades of communal harmony in the country and they have done so in the name of nationalism which is in itself unpatriotic. "This Hindu rashtra project will be a fundamental betrayal of the past of India, it will be a fundamental betrayal of the constitutional values of our country," he said.

Tharoor, who was delivering the ShihabThangal memorial lecture, spoke at length interspersed with stories which described the secular values which Thangal uphold. He was a rallying force behind the Hindu and Muslim unity in Kerala, Tharoor said.

"I have great hope that Thangal's ideas will not succumb to the narrow-minded approach of those who are not just betraying the nation but the very religion they claim have the right to speak," he said, targetting the BJP and its ideology. He drew parallel between the writings of English novelist George Orwell on nationalism and the ideas being propagated currently in the country-that of "obsession, instability and indifference to reality".