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Journalism of Courage
In a bid to counter BJP’s nationalism narrative, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday accepted a 125 x 83.3 feet tricolour, weighing 240 kg, which was presented to Chief Minister Vijay Rupani four months ago, only to be reportedly refused by officials citing lack of space.
In another event, in an attempt to connect with his audience, Rahul hugged a part-time woman teacher after listening to her plight during an interactive session with the teaching community of the poll-bound Gujarat.
Addressing a gathering at Dalit Shakti Kendra in Ahmedabad’s Nani Devati village near Sanand, Rahul said: “Even if the flag is 15 km long I would have accepted it. How could the Chief Minister of Gujarat say that there is no space for the flag? One should have space in the heart for the country’s flag. This is the thinking of BJP ministers. They have no space for flag, but have space for the handful of industrialists.” He said the Prime Minister or the Gujarat chief minister had no space for Dalits, farmers, poor and small businessmen.
The giant flag was taken in a van which had pictures of various Congress leaders, including Rahul. Dalits from various villages of Sanand stood on paved roads leading to Sanand from Nani Devati village and paid their respect to the flag. The flag will kept at Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum in Delhi.
In a release days ahead of Rahul’s event, the Dalit Shakti Kendra had stated: “India’s largest national flag, about 125 ft wide and 83.3 ft high, was supposed to be handed over to Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, asking him to take steps to annihilate untouchability practices as called by Babasaheb Ambedkar. But the officials of the Gandhinagar Collectorate, on behalf of the chief minister said, that they do not have enough space to keep the flag… Rahul Gandhi, will accept the national flag with full respect and dignity on behalf of citizens of India and vow to make India free from untouchability practices. This is an historical move by a politician to fight back the forces which are promoting anti-nationalism by insulting national pride.”
Senior BJP leaders have been raising the issue of “nationalism”, with CM Rupani recently saying that “the nation is our priority. We will live for the nation and die for it”. “For us, politics is a tool to serve the nation. We have a dream to have uniform civil code in India, zero tolerance for terrorism and no petrodollar in the country, which means development (and it) is above caste and religion,” he had told a gathering at a Haridham Sokhada in Vadodara recently.
The Congress vice-president, during his speech in Sanand, also targeted the BJP-led central and the state governments over the Una Dalit flogging incident and the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula at the University of Hyderabad (UoH). “On one hand there is the Una incident and on the other is the case of Rohit Vemula. I had said in Hyderabad that Rohit Vemula did not commit suicide, but was killed by the Government of India. We stood by Rohit Vemula and also stood by the Una victims,” Rahul said.
Later in Nikol, at his party’s Navsarjan Gyan Adhikar Sabha, Rahul, while interacting with teaching fraternity, came down the stage to console one of the teachers and hugged her. Ranjana Awasthi, who did her PhD in Sanskrit in 1994, became emotional while sharing her woes. “Even after 22 years of service as a part-time lecturer, our salary is just Rs 12,000 per month… We were not even granted maternity leave. We have seen some of the worst days of our life during this service,” said Awasthi with a heavy heart. “Now, the government is planning to annul our entire service by offering us Rs 40,000 salary under a fixed-pay regime. Like others, we also wanted to retire with pension benefits to be able to live a respectable life.” To this, Rahul replied, “Sometimes such questions come us to which we cannot reply in words.” Saying this, he walked to the centre of the hall and hugged her.
At this point, Ashok Gehlot, Gujarat affairs in-charge said, “This is an issue in Gujarat. Even in Rajasthan there were private teachers, but we converted all those to government teachers with a single order.” Rahul assured the teachers that if the Congress comes to power, the fraternity will be one of the stakeholders in framing the policies.
Gandhi termed the fixed-pay system of the Gujarat government as “unfair” and promised to change it. The policy was introduced by the Gujarat government in 2006, wherein such direct recruits were only entitled to get a fixed salary for a period of five years. “It is not fair to call it a Gujarat model. The Gujarat model is something else… We want to make everybody relax and comfortable and if we frame some policy and I say this from this stage here that you are our stakeholders we report to you. We will ask you before framing it,” he said.
Later speaking with the media, Awasthi said, “I have written 10 books and attended 15 seminars. Despite this, we are going through such a pathetic situation. … Rahul Gandhi came to me and hugged me… I felt like my younger brother hugged me seeing me in such a pain.”
