The function held on Saturday to celebrate DMK leader M. Karunanidhi’s 94th birthday provided a platform for national leaders opposed to the BJP to come together and declare that fighting the saffron party and putting an end to its government at the Centre alone would be a fitting tribute to the nonagenarian leader.
“All of us on the stage and among the crowd will not allow Prime Minister Narendra Modi to implement the ideology of the RSS,” said AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi.
“We will not let the RSS and Mr. Modi impose one idea on this country. We will never allow the silencing of more than a billion Indian voices,” he said.
Recalling the demonetisation move and how the “Prime Minister decided that the money in the pocket of everyone was worthless, Mr. Gandhi said that the BJP and the RSS did not believe in discussion and conversation and claimed to have answers for all the problems.
CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said leaders of all parties in the country except the RSS and BJP had come together when there was a critical situation in the country. “Politics is not just arithmetic. Two plus two could become twenty two if we strengthened people’s struggle,” he said.
Mr. Yechury also said DMK working president M.K. Stalin would have a larger political role in the coming days. “It was not the US flag or the UK flag, but the the red flag of Josef Stalin that announced the end of the Hitler’s regime. The name Stalin has a lot of responsibility. We should jointly strengthen the struggles,” he said.
While CPI general secretary Sudhakar Reddy said democratic and Left forces had an important role to play and the birthday meeting of Karunanidhi was a “political summit at a national level”, party MP D. Raja said the time had come for the Marxists and leaders of the Dravidian movement to walk shoulder to shoulder against communalism.
Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, while recalling the relationship that his family shared with Mr. Karunanidhi spanning three generations, called upon the leaders to defeat the anti-people BJP.
Likening the meeting to the rally organised in Chennai in 1988 by Mr. Karunanidhi to launch the National Front, Mr. Stalin said the challenge before the leaders today was to put an end to the dictatorial BJP regime.
“The BJP is making every effort to convert India into a communal nation and they are making sanyasis as Chief Ministers to fulfil their agenda. The DMK will stand by the secular forces to defeat the designs of the BJP,” he said.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Puducherry Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy, Trinamool Congress leader Derik O’Brien and IUML leader Kader Mohideen spoke.
