Janjivan Bureau / New Delhi : Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday backed the ongoing farmers’ agitation in Delhi and targeted the BJP government for using police force on the protesters.
“On the occasion of World Non-Violence Day, the BJP Government is committing atrocities on farmers. The Government’s celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary have started with police action on peacefully protesting farmers. The farmers cannot even agitate in the national capital now,” Gandhi tweeted even while he was chairing the meeting of the Congress Working Committee at Wardha.
The CWC meeting at Sevagram, Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram in Wardha, is under way to discuss the party’s strategy for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Gandhi is expected to lay down the party’s political vision and will again reiterate his commitment to Gandhian philosophy in preparation for the next year’s election.
The Congress has been crafting a narrative that the BJP’s pro-Gandhi pitch is a sham and in fact the RSS is “antithetical to the Gandhian ideals”.
The CWC meet on Tuesday is reminiscent of a similar CWC meet which Mahatma Gandhi chaired in March 1942. This meet resolved for the British to Quit India.
“The CWC will again resolve for the BJP to quit the power centre. India wants freedom from fear and divisiveness which the BJP is spreading,” Congress media head Randeep Surjewala said.
The top Congress leadership including former PM Manmohan Singh and former party chief Sonia Gandhi are in Wardha and are expected to take part in a foot march Rahul Gandhi will lead in Wardha shortly after the conclusion of the CWC meet.
The party leaders were photographed washing their utensils at Sevagram, in attempt to send out the signal of “simplicity” on Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday.
The CWC, meanwhile, is expected to adopt a resolution stressing the Gandhian values of harmony and peace.
The resolution will also attack the BJP and RSS for practising “hateful and caustic” politics.
The CWC meet comes close on the heels of an RSS outreach event in Delhi where Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat invoked Gandhi and said the new editions of “Bunch of Thoughts” by former RSS chief MS Golwalkar did not contain his anti-Muslim remarks, which “were contextual and dated”.
Historian Ram Guha says the RSS cannot speak of Gandhi and Golwalkar in the same breath as the latter’s thoughts were opposed to what Gandhi taught and practised—communal harmony.
