JOIN USBJP-RSS use Ambedkar to woo Dalits, then stab him from behind, says Rahul Gandhi
Pointing fingers at the Sangh Parivar for "throttling" the Constitution, top Congress leader Rahul Gandhi Saturday said the RSS-BJP people fold hands before B R Ambedkar to woo Dalits but they actually stab him from behind, a repeat of what they attempted to do with the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi.
Close on the heels of his attack on V D Savarkar in Maharashtra, Rahul's sharp attack on the RSS-BJP came at a public meeting on the sidelines of Bharat Jodo Yatra in Ambedkar's birthplace on the occasion of Constitution Day, the day on which the Constitution was adopted by the Constituent Assembly in 1949.
In an apparent reference to the RSS hoisting tricolour at its Nagpur headquarters for the first time in 2002, Rahul said there is one organisation in the country that did not hoist the tricolour, the symbol of Constitution, for 52 years and those who refused to salute it were now trying to "dismantle" the Constitution that provided equal rights for everyone.
Continuing his “ideological” fight against the RSS-BJP on Dalit and tribal fronts, Rahul first referred to how the RSS and BJP are attempting to woo ‘Adivasis’ but by referring to them as ‘vanvasis’, which he said was to deny them their rightful claim as the “first owners” of the country.
He said they were doing the same thing with Dalits. “They are trying to attract Dalits to their fold. For that, they show respect to Ambedkar. The Constitution was Ambedkar's life's work but they were dismantling it. The RSS people fold their hands in front of Ambedkar but stab him from behind.”
"They are now doing the same thing to Mahatma Gandhi now. They first gave their support to Godse and now they are forced to pay respects to Gandhiji,” he said.
Emphasising that he chose to speak in Mhow on November 26 as it is “Ambedkar’s land”, he said the tricolour is a symbol of the Constitution and without the latter, the national flag is nothing. The Constitution provides a meaning to the tricolour, he said.
He said the Constitution was the work of a number of luminaries, including Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhai Patel and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and it was for the first time that all Indians got a Constitution which gave equal rights to all.
“The RSS cannot finish off this Constitution, they don’t have it in them to do it directly, as people will show them their place if they do so. That is why they are taking the backdoor. It is not a book. But a strength, a thought. RSS wants to destroy that thought,” he said.
"What the RSS does to achieve this is to appoint their own people one after another in all institutions. The idea is to finish off the Constitution,” he said.
Referring to his pet theme of how the economy fares under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said demonetisation, GST, privatisation and Covid-19 handling were not policies but “weapons to scare the poor and the unemployed”.
In his conversations with youth and businessmen, he said he told them that they were forced to “starve to death”. He said when someone says he wants to be an engineer, it actually means that he will end up as a “mazdoor” (daily wager). “Start up means start up for daily labour,” he added.