Everything Mahatma Gandhi stood for coming under assault: CPI(M)

The CPI(M) on Wednesday said that everything Mahatma Gandhi stood for as the leader of India's freedom struggle was now coming under assault.

In two articles in party mouthpiece People's Democracy, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and politburo member Prakash Karat highlighted Gandhi's vision in the backdrop of the situation prevailing in the country.

Karat said in his piece that had Gandhi been alive today, he would have sat on an indefinite hunger strike against the mob lynching of innocent people accused of cow slaughter.

"Because for him, even a single act of violence against an innocent man was an anathema," Karat wrote.

Yechury said that Gandhi was embraced by all classes of society.

"This unrivalled leader of the Indian people would often be living in the house of one of the biggest capitalists in India, Ghanshyam Das Birla. It was at his house in New Delhi that Gandhiji was assassinated by the bullets of a Hindu fanatic on January 30, 1948. Is there no contradiction in the fact that Gandhiji was embraced, both, by the vast mass of the poor Indian people and by their exploiters the capitalists and the landlords?
"Recently, when the amendments to the National Investigation Agency Act were being considered by the Lok Sabha, the home minister thundered that those who opposed the amendments are supporting terrorism and protecting terrorists!