Sonia to lead march against ‘intolerance’
NEW DELHI: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday took her party’s concerns over spiraling intolerance and communal tension in the country to President Pranab Mukherjee, the move viewed as a build-up to a bigger strategy to corner the NDA government.
She and her son, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, will lead a march of party leaders on Tuesday from Parliament House to Rashtrapati Bhavan to protest “this rising and disturbing trend”, party sources said. Gandhi has been mounting pressure on the Modi government over “growing intolerance” in the country.
This comes amid clamour by writers, historians, filmmakers and scientists after the murder of rationalists MM Kalburgi in Karnataka and Narendra Dabholkar of Maharashtra, who had run-ins with Hindu hardliners for their independent views on social and religious matters.
She said intellectuals were being harassed since the NDA came to power and an effort has been made to stoke communal tension based on rumours, apparently referring to the lynching of a Muslim man at Dadri in Uttar Pradesh on the suspicion of cow slaughter.
For his part, the President has spoken several times recently against the intolerance. “Our country has thrived due to its power of assimilation and tolerance. Our pluralistic character has stood the test of time … Multiplicity is our collective strength which must be preserved at all costs,” he said, inaugurating the golden jubilee celebrations of Delhi High Court on Saturday.
The principal opposition party plans to give the President a memorandum after Tuesday’s march, where members of the extended Congress Working Committee, office-bearers and MPs will participate, besides the Gandhis.
The protest walk follows a raft of writers and artistes returning their state awards, unhappy over rising intolerance and irrationality.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley had dubbed protests by these people as “manufactured rebellion” and accused the Congress, Left thinkers and activists of “practising ideological intolerance” towards the BJP and Prime Minister Modi.
Gandhi countered the rival’s allegation by accusing people from a “particular ideology” of spreading hatred. This was part of a “predetermined plan”, she said while presenting the 29th Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration to Gandhian social activist PV Rajagopal on Saturday.
She asserted that her party would not allow “such a diabolical design” to succeed.
Earlier in March, she led about 100 leaders from 11 opposition parties – including the Janata Dal (United), Rashtriya Janata Dal, Samajwadi Party, DMK, Trinamool Congress and the Left bloc — to Rashtrapati Bhavan against the NDA government’s controversial land acquisition bill. The government had to withdraw its controversial ordinance following opposition pressure.