Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Sept 11: The BJP launched an all-out attack on the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and also organised protest demonstrations by the party-backed Sikh groups in front of his and his mother Sonia Gandhi’s official residences in Delhi over his remarks during his current visit to the United States and demanded an unconditional apology from him.
Joining in the attack on the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha were the union home minister Amit Shah and the defence minister Rajnath Singh who said it had become a habit for the Congress leader to stand with “forces that conspire to divide the country.”
“Standing with forces that conspire to divide the country and making anti-national statements have become a habit for Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party. Whether it is supporting the JKNC’s anti-national and anti-reservation agenda in J&K or making anti-India statements on foreign platforms, Rahul Gandhi has always threatened the nation’s security and hurt sentiments,” Mr Shah said in a post on X.
The “Sikh Prakoshth of the BJP,” the BJP-backed Sikh group, held protest march to the residences of Rahul and Sonia Gandhi objecting to Mr Gandhi’s remarks in the US on religious freedom enjoyed by the community in the country. Contending that they are more secure under the BJP government than they were during the Congress rule, they demanded Mr Gandhi apologise for his remarks.
During the protest, RP Singh said “Rahul Gandhi should apologise. He used the foreign land to defame India and gave a statement about Sikhs that Sikhs are not allowed to wear turban and go to Gurudwara…” The protesters, including women, raising slogans and carrying placards tried to approach Gandhi’s residence 10 Janpath, marching from Vigyan Bhawan but police stopped them.
Apart from this, the protestors from the Sikh community slogans against Gandhi and demanded his apology for allegedly “humiliating” Sikhs, holding the Congress responsible for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in the country.
While addressing a gathering of Indian Americans in Washington DC on Monday, Gandhi had said that in India, the fight was for a Sikh person to wear a turban and a kada and go the gurdwara. He also accused the RSS of considering some religions, languages and communities of being inferior to others.
Gandhi asked the name of one of the Sikh attendees in the front rows during the programme. “What is your name, brother with the turban,” he asked.
“The fight is about whether a Sikh is going to be allowed to wear his turban in India or a kada in India. Or he, as a Sikh, is going to be able to go to a gurdwara. That’s what the fight is about. And not just for him, for all religions,” said Gandhi.
The remarks have raised hackles back home, and the BJP has accused him of habitually making anti-national comments abroad, which is particularly serious now in view of his current position as the Leader of the Opposition.
The Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri has called Mr Gandhi’s comments “sinister”, and accused him of spreading “dangerous narratives” abroad. Referring to the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 following the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards, the minister said, “If there has been one time in our history when as a community, we have felt anxiety, a sense of insecurity and existential threat, it has been the times when Rahul Gandhi’s family has been in the seats of power”.
Hitting out at Rahul Gandhi’s remarks, Mr Shah said, “Rahul Gandhi’s statement lays bare the Congress’s politics of causing rifts on the lines of regionalism, religion, and linguistic differences. By speaking about abolishing reservations in the country, Rahul Gandhi has once again brought the Congress’s anti-reservation face to the forefront. The thoughts that were in his mind eventually found their way out as words,” he added.
“I want to tell Rahul Gandhi that as long as the BJP is there, neither can anyone abolish reservations nor can anyone mess with the nation’s security,” the Home Minister said. Mr Shah was responding to Mr Gandhi’s remarks at an interaction with students at Georgetown University in the US. Responding to a question on reservation, Mr Gandhi replied, “We will think of scrapping reservations when India is a fair place and India is not a fair place.”
The BJP responded by alleging that the Congress’s leader campaign to save the Constitution was a “charade” and his prejudice against reservation is out in the open. Opposition to reservation is Rahul Gandhi’s legacy, senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said, saying that former prime ministers Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were also against caste-based reservation.
Mr Prasad said other members of the Opposition’s INDIA bloc — DMK chief M K Stalin, RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav and leaders of the Left parties — should speak out on Mr Gandhi’s remarks. “I want to warn (people) that if the Congress tries to tamper with the provision of reservation in any way or scrap it, the BJP will vehemently oppose it,” he said.
The BJP’s offensive against Rahul Gandhi also needs to be seen against the backdrop of the upcoming Assembly polls in key states such as Maharashtra and Jharkhand. The party, which is on the back-foot after its Lok Sabha poll score dropped this time, wants to use Mr Gandhi’s remarks to project the Opposition as anti-reservation in an attempt to swing voters.
Mr Gandhi’s remarks during his three-day US trip, in which he repeatedly targeted BJP and its ideological parent, has drawn a sharp response from the ruling party.
Mr Gandhi also said the “fear of BJP” had vanished after the Lok Sabha poll results. “Within minutes of the election result, nobody was scared of the BJP and the Prime Minister of India. These are huge achievements, not of Rahul Gandhi or Congress, but of the people of India who realised we are not going to accept an attack on the Constitution,” he said.
In response, BJP’s Gaurav Bhatia told the media, “Everyone knows that Rahul Gandhi is an immature and part-time leader. But people have put a huge responsibility on his shoulders since he became the Leader of Opposition. But I feel sad to say that Rahul Gandhi is a black spot in Indian democracy. He does not even know what to talk about when he visits a foreign country.”
Meanwhile, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the US-based pro-Khalistani attorney, has backed Rahul Gandhi’s take on Sikhs in India, saying that Mr Gandhi “justified Sikhs for Justice (SFJ)’s global Khalistan Referendum campaign.” Mr Pannun is the general counsel to SFJ, a group based in the U.S.
In his statement released on Wednesday, Mr Pannun said Mr Gandhi’s quip on the “existential threat to Sikhs in India” was bold and “historically accurate.” Mr Pannun referred to Mr Gandhi’s address to a gathering of Indian Americans in in Herndon, a Virginia suburb of Washington D.C., on Monday in which the Congress leader accused the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) of considering some religions, languages, and communities of being inferior to others and said the fight in India was about this and not about politics.
“Rahul’s statement on “existential threat to Sikhs in India” is not only bold and pioneering but is also firmly grounded in the factual history of what Sikhs have been facing under successive regimes in India since 1947 and also corroborates SFI’s stance on the justification for Punjab Independence Referendum to establish Sikh homeland Khalistan,” he added.
Mr Pannun, wanted in India on terror charges, holds dual citizenship of the U.S. and Canada. In November last year, U.S. federal prosecutors charged Indian national Nikhil Gupta of working with an Indian government employee in the foiled plot to kill Pannun in New York. Following the allegations, India appointed a high-level inquiry committee to look into the inputs provided by the U.S. on the plot.