A ‘Hindutvavadi’ bathes alone in the Ganga but a Hindu bathes in it with crores of others, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Saturday, taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent display of religious symbolism in Varanasi and reiterated the distinction, according to him, between a “Hindu” and “Hindutvavadi.”
“For the first time, I saw a person bathing in the Ganga alone. This has never happened in history. Yogi ji was removed, Rajnath Singh was sidelined,” Mr. Gandhi stated in Amethi, the constituency he held many times before losing in 2019, referring to Mr. Modi’s dip and rituals in the Ganga before inaugurating the Kashi Vishwanath Temple Corridor recently.
Mr. Gandhi observed that a Hindu represented truth, love, non-violence and was best personified by Mahatma Gandhi and on the other hand, ‘Hindutvavadi’ meant lies, hate, violence and was represented by Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse.
Mr. Gandhi asked that while Mr. Modi says he is a Hindu, but when has he protected the truth. He asked people if Mr. Modi had delivered on the promise of providing 2 crore jobs to the youth. He further asked “is Hindu a liar?” According to him, a Hindu is a person who walks the path of truth all his [or her] life, never bows to his [or her] fear and doesn’t let his [or her] fear convert into hate, anger or violence.
Mr. Gandhi said nobody called Godse a ‘mahatma’ as he fired three bullets into the chest of a Hindu, a Hindu who spoke truth and fought for truth. “He was a coward, a weak man and could not face his fear,” he noted, adding that a ‘Hindutvavadi’ told lies.
Connection with Amethi
Mr. Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also reaffirmed their connection with the Congress bastion that fell to the BJP in 2019 and assured the people that their bond with the constituency would never break.
The relationship was not political but one of family bond, said Mr. Gandhi who, along with his Ms. Vadra took out a padayatra in Amethi.
“Our relationship is familial, old, of truth and long, and this won’t ever break. You have given me love, taught me politics and shown me the way,” said Mr. Gandhi, who had faced a shocking defeat in in 2019 at the hands of BJP’s Smriti Irani.
Asking the people to differentiate between truth and lies, he recalled the “zabardast” contribution he had made to Amethi’s development, in particular rewarding it with a network of roads and highways.
The siblings said they were proud members of the Amethi family and would always maintain that bond with the constituency. There could be no complaints in a bond of family and emotions, said Ms. Vadra. “No matter what circumstances came, our relationship never broke,” she added.
