The Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that the BJP’s agenda is to suppress the expression and participation of minorities, OBCs, Dalits and tribals.
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI — Congress leader Rahul Gandhi voiced his deep concern regarding the mistreatment faced by Dalit, tribal, and minority communities in India and acknowledged that the type of political imagination required to address the issue is currently lacking.
During an interaction with students at Sciences PO University in Paris, the Congress leader said that the BJP’s agenda is to suppress the expression and participation of minorities, OBCs, Dalits and tribals.
On a question over incidents of lynching targeted against Muslims and Dalits, Gandhi responded with deep concern, lamenting the absence of the necessary “political imagination” needed to combat the challenge. He said: “I think it requires a political imagination. For me, any individual be it a Dalit, a Muslim or anybody if mistreated is not the India I want. I think it should be taken head-on. But I don’t think the type of political imagination that is required is currently there… It ebbs and flows. We need to reconstruct the political imagination. ” He concluded: “This is the central problem in India. This is bigger than any other problem in India.
Earlier in the same session, the Congress MP hit out at the BJP and RSS, declaring neither “have nothing to do with Hinduism” and that “there is nothing Hindu about what the BJP does…” He said, “I have read the Gita, a number of the Upanishads and many Hindu books… absolutely nothing Hindu about it (the BJP).” He added: “I have not read anywhere in any Hindu book, or heard from any learned Hindu person, that you should terrorise or harm people weaker than you. This idea… this word – ‘Hindu nationalist’ – this is a wrong word. They are not ‘Hindu nationalists.”
The Gandhi scion acknowledged that the addressing of the hate crimes targeted against minorities, Dalit and tribal communities is critical which needs to be taken head-on and seemed to suggest for “reconstruction” of political imagination. It is to be noted that Gandhi’s concern was not misplaced as various global rights agencies in several reports have highlighted the atrocities against Muslims and Dalits.
It is to be noted that in May this year, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) called on the US Department of State to designate India as a “country of particular concern”, for the fourth year in a row. The report said that the Indian government “at the national, state and local levels promoted and enforced religiously discriminatory policies” in 2022. Those included “laws targeting religious conversion, interfaith relationships, the wearing of hijabs and cow slaughter, which negatively impact Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits and Adivasis (indigenous peoples and scheduled tribes)”. India, however, rejected the report.
