BJP using education to divide country: Rahul
CHENNAI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday fired fresh salvo at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ideological parent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), alleging that the ruling party at the Centre was using education to divide the country on communal lines.
During an interaction with college professors, Educators Meet, at the St Xavier College in Tirunelveli district, Gandhi said he counted on the people’s support to defeat the BJP.
The former Congress president is touring poll-bound Tamil Nadu as part of the second leg of his campaign for the April 6 assembly polls.
“If you try to make education a weapon like the RSS and BJP are doing then you will behave completely differently,” Gandhi said, adding that “Idea of centralising everything in the state or Delhi is a bad idea. Decentralising education and making it accessible is important.”
Asserting that the Congress believes that education is a weapon of empowerment, Gandhi said that the party’s secular alliance will launch scholarships to make education more accessible and affordable for the poor and women.
Hitting out at the Centre over the New Education Policy, 2020, Gandhi said that any policy on education should be an outcome of deliberations with learners and teachers. “Unfortunately this was not done,” he said, adding that the policy concentrated too much power in the hands of the Centre which was set to damage the education system.
Though NEP had a positive aspect of flexibility, Gandhi said it was a “weapon to communalise, to push a particular ideology into the Indian system and that is why I do not like it”.
On whether “young minds” should be taught to remove religion from politics, Gandhi said, “What you do want is that all religions be able to be part of the discourse…a healthy democracy should be confident to speak about anything .... ”
We are fighting a formidable enemy. We are fighting an enemy that is dominating the money in country RAHUL GANDHI, Cong leader