BJP trying to worm its way into freedom movement: Sitaram Yechury

Yechury, in his speech, went on to lampoon the BJP on a range of issues from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim about Ganesha being a product of plastic surgery — “Is this the scientific temper? You are only revising hardcore Hindutva agenda” — to accusing the government and the PM of “moving from event to event”.

He quoted from a missive of the Bombay home department to make his point that the RSS had no role to play in the Quit India movement of 1942 or any other facet of the freedom movement. “What is this Constitution Day? The Constitution, as per Dr B R Ambedkar himself, came into effect on January 26, 1950. In the interim between the adoption of the draft and the actual coming into effect, India was governed by the Independence of India Act, 1947… These people who had no role in the independence movement want to worm their way into the history of the freedom struggle.”

Yechury also hit out at Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s reference to the Third Reich. “The Leader of the House made an interesting and a very interesting reference to the Third Reich and Germany…. I must pay my gratitude to the Leader of the House for having reminded me of the Third Reich and Germany and the dangers of authoritarianism.

Sir, in 1939, when the debate in the country was going on as to what should be the character of Independent India, there was a book, which was not thought that it would be very important but a book which had a very, very important implication for Indian politics and India’s future, and that was a book called We or Our Nationhood Defined by Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar. He is called the RSS Guru… I only want to quote from that book about the Third Reich.

He said that ‘only Hindus and Hindus alone are inhabitants of this country’. And, then, what does he say about the Third Reich? I am quoting, ‘To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the semitic races, the Jews”… You please draw the parallels in India… who is that instead of the Jews and who is that for the race and the culture and its purity,” said Yechury.