Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday said that he is a Hindu, but not a Hindutvavadi, NDTV reported. He made the remarks during a massive rally in Rajasthan’s Jaipur.
Gandhi said that there is presently a competition in Indian politics between the words “Hindu” and “Hindutvavadi”. He added that while Mahatma Gandhi was an example of the former, his assassin Nathuram Godse belonged to the latter category.
“A Hindu is one who always seeks the truth,” Gandhi said. “On the other hand, a Hindutvavadi only seeks power, and does not care about the truth.”
The Congress leader also touched upon several others topics at the rally, including the farmers’ protest, the coronavirus pandemic and unemployment. He criticised the Centre for not providing compensation to the families of farmers who died during the agitation, and claimed that the Congress-led Punjab government has done so.
“The Centre first backstabbed farmers, then apologised, and now it says that it cannot give compensation to farmers,” Gandhi said.
The Congress leader added that during the Covid-19 pandemic, many other countries provided income support to people.
“On the other hand, Modiji only put money in the pockets of a few industrialists, while the poor walked for hundreds of kilometres to get home,” he said. “Two or three industrialists are not the ones who create employment. It is lakhs of small businesspersons and crores of farmers who create employment.”
Meanwhile, Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of selling what her party had created in the past 70 years, The Indian Express reported. She alleged that the BJP-led government only works for industrialists.
“Those who ask what has Congress done in 70 years, I want to ask you, leave this talk about 70 years,” Vadra said. “What have you done in the past seven years? The AIIMS, the airport from where your plane flies, the Congress built them.”
Vadra added that BJP leaders talk about China or other nations, casteism and communalism around the time of elections, but not people’s struggles, PTI reported. “It is your responsibility to make the government accountable, it is your responsibility to ask why there is so much inflation,” she said.
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