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Journalism of Courage
Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday likened the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to a “classroom bully” trying to impose “one idea” on the entire country and destroying India’s religious, cultural and linguistic diversity. He also attacked the Trinamool Congress (TMC), accusing it of helping the BJP.
Gandhi addressed a public meeting in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya where the party is on a weak wicket. While the Congress was in power in the state till 2018 and was the single-largest party after the elections that year, it was pipped to the post by an alliance headed by the National People’s Party (NPP). In 2021, the last Congress chief minister, Mukul Sangma, walked over to the TMC with nearly a dozen MLAs.
“You know the history of the TMC. You know the violence that takes place in Bengal. You know the scams, the Saradha scam that has taken place. You are aware of their tradition. They came to Goa, spent huge amounts of money in Goa. The idea was to help the BJP. This is exactly the idea in Meghalaya. The TMC’s idea in Meghalaya is to ensure that the BJP is strengthened and wins power,” he said.
His attack on the TMC comes a day after Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said at a public meeting in Nagaland that his party was in talks with other Opposition outfits and asserted that an alliance led by the Congress would come to power at the Centre in 2024.
Gandhi said the beauty of India is its diversity, but the BJP and the RSS refuse to accept that. He said the ideology of the BJP and the RSS is to attack and destroy “your culture, your tradition and your religion”.
“They refuse to accept that India has multiple ideas. That India is not one idea, not one community, not one language, not one religion. But India is many, many different ideas, many different religions, many different communities, many different languages, many different cultures,” he said.
Gandhi said, “The BJP is attacking all our states. Whether it is Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Meghalaya, Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana … every single state is being attacked by the RSS and one idea is being imposed on all these states. That is something we will resist and not accept.”
He went on to add, “Only a coward tries to impose his will on another person. The BJP is like a classroom bully. Many of you must have experienced a classroom bully. In class, there is one fellow who thinks he is stronger than everybody else, bullies everybody, doesn’t really understand anything and then one fine day somebody in the class teaches him a good lesson and he stops bullying. That is what the BJP and the RSS are. They are bullies, who think they know everything, understand everything and have no respect for anybody else. We have to fight them collectively.”
“You know about the communal polarisation they create, you know about the anti-conversion bill in Karnataka, you see on TV the mob lynchings that take place … you understand exactly what they are trying to do,” he said. The way to fight them, Gandhi said, was through “non-violence, through affection, through love and through respect for each other’s traditions, cultures, languages and religions”.
Talking about the Bharat Jodo Yatra, Gandhi said the Congress was compelled to organise the cross-country march because “the BJP and the RSS, who are running the Government in India today, have captured every single institution of the Indian state — whether it is the Parliament, media, bureaucracy, the Election Commission or the judiciary … all these institutions are under pressure and are being attacked by the ideology of the RSS and the BJP”.
He also reiterated the accusations he levelled against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Parliament earlier this month in the context of the rise of industrialist Gautam Adani. Gandhi said corruption had reached levels “which have never ever been seen in Indian history before.”
Gandhi’s appearance in Meghalaya comes as the election season in the Northeastern states is beginning to wind down. While Tripura went to the polls on February 16, Meghalaya and Nagaland will vote on February 27. Congress heavyweights were largely absent from campaigning for large parts of the campaign season. The party also fixed the All India Congress Committee (AICC) plenary session for February 24 to 26 in Raipur, leaving the top leadership occupied with it. Then, there are visuals last Wednesday of Gandhi skiing in Gulmarg in Kashmir. Gandhi had stayed away from the last round of Assembly elections too, held in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh towards the end of last year, though AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra pitched in in Himachal.
