New Delhi : At a time when the idea of Nehruvian secular India is under an assault from the RSS with a BJP government in power, his great grandson Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has vowed to ‘smash the BJP and the RSS.’ As he delivered an impassioned speech at the valedictory function of the two-day seminar organised by the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies to mark the 125th birth anniversary of Pandit Nehru, Gandhi used strong words to emphasise the Congress commitment to secularism. He said, “secularism is in our DNA, we may have lost the election to the RSS, but then in the days and weeks to come they would know what has hit them.”
His tone and tenor was reminiscent of the strong language used by his great grandfather to convey his resolve to fight the communal forces, who had said: “If any person raises his hand to strike down another on ground of religion, I shall fight him to the last breath of my life as head of the government and from outside.” The Congress vice-president was literally ‘driven’ to make this statement as most of the speakers at the seminar virtually blamed the party for its failure to live up to the ideals of Nehruvian secularism and practising . “The party was charged with following pragmatic secularism. But he rebutted every criticism that was hurled at the party by the participating scholars. Using the word for the current regime, he said that the BJP-RSS alliance was disrespecting every Indian
by denying them their dignity, and in an indirect reference to the telecast of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s Viaydashmi address by the national broadcaster Doordarshan observed that the nation belonged to everyone and no one should be subjected to their ‘hateful mediocrity’. “For the first time in the history, an organisation that is openly opposed to the ideology and values of our Constitution has acquired decisive power. The stated purpose of the RSS is to establish a theocratic, autocratic state in India. To achieve this goal, it has to destroy the current liberal, progressive, secular, social democratic Republic. And as they have demonstrated in the last eighteen months, they are prepared to use this very power to destroy it,” the Congress vice-president said. In his prepared speech, he said, “Pandit Nehru was a deeply tolerant man. He saw strength in the fact that everybody had a different background and a different story. To him, India’s tolerance was what made us great. Our tolerance was what we had to offer the rest of the world.”
In the context of recent incidents of intolerance, he said, “I pay homage to the memory of Mr. Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi, who were martyred for nothing more than sharing their opinion. Also to Akhlaq and Mohsin Sheikh who were martyred for being Muslims. Vaibhav and Divya, the two kids who were burned to death because they happened to be seen as Dalits and inferiors.”
