New Delhi, March 7: Oblivious to the threat by the RSS to drag Rahul Gandhi to court for linking it to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, the Congress campaign trail launched today cautions India against a Nathuram Godse still lurking everywhere.
The Congress is obviously determined to make the BJP’s communal history its campaign engine as was reflected at the concluding day of the NSUI (party’s youth wing) convention where every speaker referred to the “politics of hatred” and even young leader described the rivals as “followers of Godse’s ideology.”
The young boys and girls cheered lustily whenever any speaker talked of the Sangh Parivar’s intolerant ideology. While former Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot listed the attempt to misguide today’s youth by the “communal and fascist forces” as one of the greatest concerns, Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi pointed to Narendra Modi’s “dictatorial” approach and argued that he was good only in “packaging and publicity.”
Rahul Gandhi, who had earned the RSS wrath by blaming them for Mahatma’s killing, while speaking in Maharashtra yesterday, focused on BJP’s “duplicity” on the issue of corruption today, pointing out that their leader do not see corruption in Karnataka, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. He indirectly referred to their intolerance by talking of “anger” in words and deeds and asked the NSUI members to work peacefully.
But the party’s website issued an appeal today that stated: “Unfortunately, there continues to be a Nathuram Godse lurking round the corner, preaching a philosophy of hate. Godse represented a poisonous ideology that snatched away Mahatma Gandhi from us. Advocates of that philosophy will not hesitate to bring down a masjid or a church. They won’t think twice before killing a Christian or a Muslim. They will do all they can to divide us.”
Without naming the BJP or the RSS, it continued: “Our fight against communalism and religious fanaticism is a tireless one. India’s secular and plural ethos has to be constantly defended from forces trying to spread hate and assert the supremacy of one religion over another. Our spirit is stronger than the forces of hate.” Most of the Congress slogans for this election is based on this theme and deals with “kattar soch” and the tendency to “divide society.”
The party is not at all worried about the RSS threat to file a defamation case against Rahul and would welcome a fierce discourse of Sangh Parivar’s ideology and history that a legal wrangle would trigger. The Congress is trying to shift focus on communalism as the people seem not interested in its track record in social sector and the legislations brought about in the past 10 years.
