E-Paper
BJP’s actions not in sync with Hinduism, says Rahul
Gandhi also accused the BJP and its ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, of trying to “stop the expression and participation” of the minorities
Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is currently touring Europe, attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) during his address at a university in Paris, saying that the ruling party just aims to get power at any cost and that there is “nothing Hindu” about their actions.
“I’ve read the Gita, a number of the Upanishads, and many Hindu books; there is nothing Hindu about what the BJP does, absolutely nothing,” Gandhi said, during an interaction at the Sciences PO University in Paris, a leading social sciences institution in France, a video of which was released on Sunday.
He was responding to a question about the rise of “Hindu nationalism” in the country.
“I have not read anywhere, in no Hindu book, from no learned Hindu person have I ever heard that you should terrorise, harm people who are weaker than you. So, this idea, this word, Hindu nationalists, this is a wrong word. They’re not Hindu nationalists. They have nothing to do with Hinduism. They are out to get power at any cost, and they will do anything to get power… They want dominance of a few people and that is what they are about. There is nothing Hindu about them,” the former Congress president said.
Gandhi also accused the BJP and its ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), of trying to “stop the expression and participation” of the minorities and other oppressed sections in India.
“It is a matter of shame for India to have minorities that feel uncomfortable in their own country. If there are 200 million people who feel uncomfortable in India, if people from the Sikh community feel uncomfortable, women feel uncomfortable, it is a matter of shame for us. That needs to be corrected,” the Congress leader said.
“What the BJP and the RSS are trying to do, the heart of what they’re trying to do is trying to stop the expression, the participation of lower castes, other backward castes, tribals and minority communities,” he said. “For me, an India where a Dalit person or a Muslim person, tribal person, upper-caste person, anybody, is being mistreated, is being attacked, is not the India I want.”
Speaking on the ongoing debate around the name of the country, Gandhi said that both India and Bharat are documented in the Constitution, adding that both names are “perfectly fine”. He said the BJP-led Union government was fiddling with the idea of name change out of “irritation” as the newly formed Opposition bloc was also named INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance).
“The Indian Constitution uses both names (India and Bharat). Both names are perfectly fine. But we have perhaps irritated the (central) government with our coalition name... And that’s why they decided to change the name of the country,” he alleged. “There is something deeper that is going on, which is that people who want to change the name of anything are basically trying to deny history...”
Gandhi started his week-long Europe trip on September 5. Paris was the second city on his tour after Brussels. He is scheduled to address an interaction, titled “India in the World” at Universiteit Leiden in the Netherlands, before returning to New Delhi on September 11.
Responding to Gandhi’s remark, BJP MP Tejasvi Surya wrote on X, “The very fact that Rahul Gandhi thinks that Hinduism is practised by referring to ‘books’ shows how shallow his understanding of our dharma.”
“That he has been reduced to crying before a handful of people in some far away European city while Bharat is achieving global consensus at G20 is telling of how the nation has rejected his brand of politics in the last decade,” he added.
