A file photo of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi with ex-servicemen during the Bharat Jodo Yatra in Raichur. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
On the day that the Bharath Jodo Yatra completed its Karnataka leg, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi thanked the people of the State for participating with him, and accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of going against the teachings of Basavanna.
“Guru Basavanna taught not to steal, kill, lie, or show anger and intolerance to others. The BJP has done exactly opposite of his teachings in Karnataka,” he said in a statement released on Sunday as the yatra completed 22 days in Karnataka and moved to Telangana.
“The State, which remained a model for the country, is now infamous as 40% commission government and is a fitting example for suit-boot sarkar. Communal harmony and public sector development has been affected. Economic development has been paralysed. The State that remained peaceful has been used as a laboratory to fan hatred and bad governance,” he said.
Mr. Gandhi said disadvantaged sections of society and minorities faced rising tide of hatred and violence while languages, diversity culture and history of the State are being decimated and distorted.
Meanwhile, Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah on Sunday said that the Bharath Jodo Yatra has given a fillip to fight against dictatorship, bad governance, and communal polarisation. “The yatra has also helped party leaders and workers to understand the pulse of the people better. The yatra may have left Karnataka, but the awareness that it created, unity that it brought in and hopes that it has raised will help us in our fight to protect democracy,” Mr. Siddaramaiah said in a note on the day the yatra completed its Karnataka leg.
Thanking Mr. Gandhi for making it a people’s movement and not restricting the yatra to a party programme, the former Chief Minister said that the yatra has also created awareness about who Mr. Gandhi, who has been vilified through character assassination, is.
The KPCC also released a booklet on Sunday, and accused the BJP of peddling lies and spending hundreds of crores to run the organised lying factory. “This yatra was against the BJP’s peddled lies. Ever since India attained independence, RSS-backed governments have been attempting to dilute the Constitution and working against national anthem and national flag covertly and sometimes overtly.” When RSS and other organisations did not get support from people, they resorted to buying legislators.”
It said though the seeds of communal division were sown by Savarkar, who first propounded the two-nation theory based on religion in 1937 at a Hindu Mahasabha meeting at Ahmedabad that was later picked by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the RSS and other organisations accuse Gandhi and Nehru of dividing the nation. “While L.K. Advani’s Rath Yatra in 1990 resulted in death of 268 persons in communal violence, Bharath Jodo Yatra is unifying people and upholding country’s diversity.”
