New Delhi: Caught between Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s hindutva and charges of playing "soft hindutva", Congress president Sonia Gandhi on February 1 said her party's fight is not against religion, but against its political misuse.

"Our fight is not against religion. Indeed, it cannot be. Our confrontation is not against the practice of religion but against its political misuse," she said delivering the keynote address at the launching of People's Integration Council.

Stating that individuals have a religion and the state does not have one, she said the only religion for the state is economic growth, human development and social empowerment.

Making an oblique attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), she said some forces were making unrelenting efforts to cynically use the external threat posed by cross- border terrorism to polarise the society.

"Today, we face a threat not just from cross-border terrorism but also a threat from within, from those who respect no rules, no norms, no conventions of Democratic discourse and debate. Their very commitment to our Constitution is under question," she said.

Besides, she said that the establishment of the Council was most timely as it has come when the country's liberal and pluralistic traditions were under sustained assault and the great religions that have flourished for centuries and millenia are sought to be "hijacked by bigots and fanatics".

PTI