Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday said that India did not get freedom from the British to be colonised by the ideology of the RSS.
Addressing a series of public meetings during the ‘Jansamparkam’ (public outreach) programme, Rahul Gandhi said, the RSS and the BJP were trying to impose an ideology which believed in one nation, one leader, one language and one culture. This is a gross misunderstanding of the idea of India, he remarked.
The Congress leader said, it was a fight between the ideology of the RSS and the BJP on one hand and the Congress on the other hand. He said, Congress believes in diversity and respects every language and culture.
He specifically asserted that a language cannot be imposed from the top as it comes from inside the heart of a person. “To tell someone that your language is inferior to mine or your belief is inferior to mine, is an insult to the person”, he observed.
Gandhi said, India was like a bouquet of different flowers and each flower added to the beauty of the bouquet. “You can’t say that every flower should be of the same colour”, he remarked, while drawing parallels between the beauty of the diversity that India possesses and attempts to disturb that.
The Wayanad MP accused both the central and the Kerala government of giving step-motherly treatment to the people here. He said the biggest problem in getting the local issues resolved was because the Congress was neither in power at the centre nor in the state.
He expressed confidence that the party will soon be in power at both places amidst great applause and cheer.
He said, while some problems like the “man-animal” conflict and ban on night traffic were complicated and can take time to resolve, the issues like setting up a medical college was quite simple and can be easily done if the state government wished to do.
He disclosed that he had written several times to the Chief Minister on the matter, but for the reasons best known to him (the CM) this was not being done.
In a special message to the people of Wayanad, Gandhi said, he treats every person here, regardless of his ideology or affiliation as his own family and whenever he is travelling to Wayanad, he feels like travelling towards home.
He said he will be asking his mother Ms Sonia Gandhi to visit Wayanad as she was missing the most beautiful place on earth. He said she will be staying here for about ten days.
Gandhi was accompanied by the party general secretary in charge of organization, KC Venugopal and others.
