Congress leader Shashi Tharoor clarified today that he had not intended to equate Kanhaiya Kumar, the student recently arrested on charges of sedition at Jawaharlal Nehru University or JNU, with freedom fighter Bhagat Singh. "It was a girl in the audience (at JNU) who mentioned Bhagat Singh, and I said that Bhagat Singh was a Kanhaiya by which I meant he was a young man in his twenties with Marxist ideas and beliefs who had a great passion for the motherland and Kanhaiya had the same qualities ...it's nothing more than that," Tharoor, a parliamentarian from Kerala, said to reporters.

Tharoor tweeted: Quite. Both Bhagat Singh & Kanhaiya Marxists in their 20s, passionate about their country. That's all. Eras different

The BJP disagreed. "If Kanhaiya is Bhagat Singh, what are Sonia and Rahul Gandhi?" asked the party's Shahnawaaz Hussain, referring to Mr Tharoor's party bosses. "The way the Congress is making anti-national slogans, even Gandhi and Nehru would be upset seeing all this," he claimed.