India will not remain India if it is polarised and communalised, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed told the Hindustan Times. He described the mob lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri last month and the petrol bomb attack on Kashmiri trucker Zahid Ahmed on October 9 as an “assault on the secular fibre of India.”

Condemning recent controversial statements made by Bharatiya Janata Party leaders following the Dadri lynching, Sayeed sought to remind the Narendra Modi-led central government that politics of communalism is “a dangerous game”. He asked the prime minister to instead deliver on his poll promises of development and good governance. Sayeed’s Peoples Democratic Party is an alliance with the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir.