The BJP on Thursday hit back at the Congress leadership, accusing it of using Jawaharlal Nehru’s birth anniversary to “divide society and spread hatred” and said that despite efforts to “play politics”, the present leadership was “not good enough” to have non-BJP parties rally round it.
Reacting sharply to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Swachch Bharat campaign, the BJP said Mr. Modi was trying to accomplish an India of Mahatma Gandhi’s dreams and connecting people with it to make it into a mass movement.
“He is at liberty to praise English, but he has no right to insult Hindi,” party spokesman Shahnawaz Hussain said of Mr. Gandhi’s remarks.
Nehru’s contributionsEarlier, speaking at the 125 birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru at the Talkatora Stadium here, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said: “There is perhaps no field that he did not contribute to, no problem of the country that he did not try to find a solution for given his tremendous energy which aimed to forge a new united nation,” Ms. Gandhi said. “If it wasn’t for him, it wouldn’t have been possible to launch the Chandrayaan and Mangalyan in space,” she added.
In his address, Mr. Rahul Gandhi alleged: “Today, the angry people who run the country want to ban English to promote Hindi.”
“On the one hand, they pick up brooms so that they can have photo-ops while on the other they spread venom in the form of communal hatred. Only the Congress can fight and defeat the hatemongers running the country these days,” he added.
Both his mother and Mr. Gandhi accepted that the 129-year-old Congress was currently facing a crisis but insisted that the grand old party would bounce back.
“If he [Nehru] was alive, he would have asked us to go to the people, to establish a better connection with them and to strengthen the organisation. But let our critics know that our party has existed for over a hundred years and will continue to since we take inspiration from our forefathers,” Ms. Gandhi said.
Also in attendance at the conclave were the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Shakeel Ahmed, former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and the entire leadership of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC), including president Arvinder Singh Lovely.
