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An aggressive Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday warned against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s “politics of communal violence” in poll-bound Rajasthan.
Championing the party’s bid for a second term in power, Gandhi evoked the gussa aur dard (pain and anger) of common people, both Hindus and Muslims, who bore the brunt of the riots fanned by political parties. “They lit the flames of communal hatred in Muzzafarnagar and Gujarat; then, it is left to us to douse those flames,” he said.
Addressing back-to-back rallies at Churu and Alwar, Gandhi seemed aware of the poll surveys predicting a huge win for the BJP in Rajasthan. He first lambasted the BJP’s brand of politics and then evoked the “sacrifice” by his family, the Gandhi dynasty.
While Muslims account for 8.5 per cent of the population in Rajasthan, Gandhi’s constant harping on the communal violence theme at both rallies was aimed at reaching out to minorities elsewhere, too — from Uttar Pradesh to Kashmir.
Using a personal example to illustrate how “damaging and long-lasting” the effects of communal violence could be, he said it took him 10-15 years to calm his anger against the Sikh bodyguards who had gunned down his grandmother, late prime minister Indira Gandhi.
He recalled how a member of legislative Assembly from Punjab had surprised him by saying “if he had met me 20 years back, he would have killed me. And now, I am sitting in the same room as you. He said he was full of anger then, but now he could embrace me”. Gandhi brought home the message to his audience: “It takes years for that anger to subside but a minute to provoke it...It takes so much time to remove that anger and create brotherhood.” He added parties such as the BJP “stoke anger for their political gains. That’s why I am against their politics”.
On the work done by the Ashok Gehlot government in the state and by the United Progressive Alliance government in the country, Gandhi asked his audience whether it had not benefited from free medicines, pensions for the aged and other incentives provided by the state government.
“Congress is doing the politics of the poor, the politics of rights,” he said, adding people had been given the right to food, the right to work (through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) and rights over their land (through the land Bill).
