Congress battling to defend Rahul’s out-of-context remark

“Yes, Congress is a party of Muslims,” Rahul Gandhi said at a meeting with the Muslim intellectuals he addressed here last Thursday. The BJP jumped over this remark torn out of context by a local Urdu daily on Monday to brand the Congress a “Muslim party.”

The Congress leadership and its spokespersons were battling throughout the day to fight back this bizarre crisis invented by the BJP with a sinister distortion of an argument advanced by Rahul to actually lay stress in the meeting that the Congress always believed in inclusive politics.

The party sources said someone had taped the meeting and that is how the Urdu daily’s editor stood by Rahul’s quote, embarrassing the Congress.

Rahul’s remark had come in response to a participant cautioning him that the Congress should not focus on the issues that enable the BJP to dub it as a Muslim Party. What Rahul said is torn out of context from his response: “Yes, Congress is a party of Muslims, it is a party of Dalits, it is a party of OBCs... of the weaker sections from all castes and religions.”

The BJP lapped up the Urdu daily’s headline to portray the grand old party as anti-Hindu as Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself asked Rahul if the Congress is now a party of Muslims and let loose his ministers of defence, law, human resources development and BJP spokespersons to continue the chorus of the Congress becoming an anti-Hindu party.

As the raging controversy refused to die down, an exasperated Congress chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala said: “This is a planned conspiracy by a sick mindset to divide the society. Let Prime Minister Narendra Modi spread as much hatred as he wants, the Congress is determined to confront the BJP’s divisive agenda with full force.” Like the Shiva, the Congress will swallow all poison oozing out of the BJP, he said.

The party sources said someone had taped the meeting and that is how the Urdu daily’s editor stood by Rahul’s quote, embarrassing the Congress