RSS believes some religions, languages inferior, says Rahul
WASHINGTON: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has accused the RSS of considering some religions, languages and communities of being inferior to others and said that the fight in India is about this and not about politics.
The Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha was addressing a gathering of several hundred Indian Americans in Herndon, a Virginia suburb of Washington DC, on Monday. “First of all, you have to understand what the fight is about. The fight is not about politics. That is superficial,” Gandhi said as he asked one of the Sikh attendees in the front rows to give his name. “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 Gurdwara. That’s what the fight is about. And not just for him, for all religions,” said Rahul.
Gandhi is currently on a fourday visit to the United States. His first stop was in Dallas and he arrived in Washington DC on Monday.
Criticising the RSS for their policies and vision of India, he said, “What the RSS is basically saying is that certain states are inferior to other states. Certain languages are inferior to other languages. Certain religions are inferior to other religions. Certain communities are inferior to other communities. This is what the fight is about.” “...that is the ideology of the RSS. Tamil, Marathi, Bengali, Manipuri. These are all inferior languages. That’s what the fight is about,” he said, asserting that these issues end up in the polling booth, the Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabha.
“But the fight is about what type of India we are going to have,” he said. He asserted that regardless of the region one belongs from, “all of you have your history, all of you have your tradition, all of you have your language, and every single one of them is as important as any other one.” Gandhi also said that the BJP has no understanding of India. “India is called a union of states. And in the Constitution, it’s written clearly. They say this is not a union. These are separate things. Among these, only one is very important. And whose headquarters is in Nagpur,” he said, in a veiled reference to the RSS.