GUWAHATI
Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi called the Bharatiya Janata Party “anti-tribal and anti-minorities” while slamming Prime Minister Narendra Modi for favouring businessman Gautam Adani at the cost of the country’s economy.
Addressing his first rally in poll-bound Meghalaya on Wednesday, he said the BJP and its ideological partner Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh were like bullies who thought they knew everything and did not respect others.
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“We have to teach them a lesson together but through non-violence,” he told a large crowd in Meghalaya’s capital Shillong.
The BJP and the RSS do not have any love or respect for the traditions, cultures, languages and religions of others that do not fit their narrative, Mr. Gandhi said.
“The RSS has captured all the institutions and is attacking the people and their faith each passing day. They do not respect the culture and faith of minorities and tribals. They prefer coercive politics where they bully those who refuse to budge to their conditions,” he said.
Referring to the anti-conversion bill passed in Karnataka in January 2021 and the mob lynching of people from minority communities, Mr. Gandhi said these were the outcome of the “one India” that the BJP and RSS had been imposing on all the States.
“Dressed to deceive”
He advised the people not to be deceived by the attire of different tribes the Prime Minister donned when he visited the northeast because he “attacks your religion, culture, history and language”.
“When I come here to Meghalaya, I try to understand your perspective, listen to you and appreciate your history, culture and traditions,” he said.
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Mr. Gandhi said the BJP government had been abusing power by looking after the interests of big businesses, pointing out how Mr. Modi “helps Gautam Adani clinch crucial business deals in India and abroad”.
He cited the controversy over Mr. Adani’s business deals as an example of media censorship of anything that was critical of the BJP. “We can’t express ourselves in the media anymore because it is controlled by two-three big industrialists who have links with the Prime Minister,” he said.
Mr. Gandhi also attacked the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and called it the ‘B team’ of the BJP.
“Is the TMC a silent partner of the BJP? Did it enter Goa only to divide the votes against Congress? Is TMC attempting something similar in Meghalaya,” he asked.
TMC hits back
Campaigning for the party in western Meghalaya’s Rajabala along with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday, the TMC’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee urged Mr. Gandhi to revisit the Congress’s “politics of vanity instead of attacking us”.
He countered the Congress leader’s allegation that the TMC had been helping the BJP edge out the Congress from Meghalaya, after Goa.
“By the same logic, when the Congress contested 92 seats in the Bengal elections in 2021, was their idea to help the BJP,” Mr. Banerjee asked.
He said the Congress had failed to resist the BJP. “Their irrelevance, incompetence and insecurity have put them in a state of delirium,” he said.
“Rahul Gandhi’s statements against the TMC is pretty rich, especially coming from a party that has lost 40 out of the last 45 Assembly elections in India,” Mr. Banerjee said, asserting that the TMC’s growth had been driven by people’s love and not by money.
Along with Nagaland, elections to the 60-member Meghalaya Assembly would be held on February 27. The results would be declared on March 2.
