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, add money ing 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... but the government of India doesn’t want people to speak. I’ll give you an example, Indian government says they represent Hinduism. A lot of ideas that they espouse, has nothing to do with Hinduism. Nowhere in Hinduism does it say insult people, kill people, beat people. But they do it.”
The Congress leader said that the fight was against a “formidable enemy” who was dominating the money in the country. “We are fighting a formidable enemy (Modi). We are fighting an enemy that is dominating the in this country. We are fighting an enemy that is crushing its opponents. But we have done this before. We have defeated a much bigger enemy (British) than this new enemy that has come.”
“Who is Narendra Modi in comparison to the British empire? Nobody. People of this country sent the British empire back and in the same way we will send Narendra Modi back to Nagpur (RSS headquarters in Maharashtra),” Gandhi said.
Gandhi said this would be achieved without any hatred, anger or violence towards PM Modi or his party even if they may ‘abuse’ or unleash ‘violence’ against them.
Congress has allied with the principal opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu the second round of seat sharing talks will resume between them after Gandhi completes his campaign March 1.
The BJP is in alliance with the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.
On Sunday, Union minister Amit Shah addressed a rally in the state, where he targeted the previous Dmk-congress government over alleged corruption. “Congress will disappear from not only Puducherry but the entire country because of its dynastic politics.”
We are fighting a formidable enemy. We are fighting an enemy that is dominating the money in country RAHUL GANDHI, Cong leader