Even as Congress leader Rahul Gandhi attempts to call bluff of BJP’s Hindutva claim at a massive rally in Jaipur, it wasn’t the saffron publicity machine but AIMIM chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi who delivered a rebuttal.
Owaisi, whose party is often being taunted as the B-team of the BJP, tweeted, “Rahul and INC fertilised the ground for Hindutva. Now they are trying to harvest majoritarianism.”
“Bringing Hindus to power is a secular agenda in 2021. Wah! India belongs to all Bharatiyas. Not Hindus alone. India belongs to people of all faiths and also those who have no faith,” he tweeted.
The BJP’s publicity paraphernalia is trained to counter every Opposition salvo promptly and more sharply, but on Sunday the AIMIM supremo seemed to have taken up the cudgels on the BJP’s behalf.
Earlier, addressing a veritable sea of humanity during the “Mahengai Hatao Maharally” attended Congress interim chief Sonia Gandhi and Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, Rahul drew a distinct line between Hindus and Hindutvawadis.
He asserted that the BJP was a group of opportunistic “Hindutvawadis who want power at any cost” and were not true Hindus.
“Mahatma Gandhi was a Hindu and Godse was Hindutvawadi,” Rahul said, elaborating that a Hindu continuously searches for truth and spends his entire life on this quest, just like Mahatma Gandhi. A Hindutvawadi, in contrast, spends his entire life for power. “A Hindutvawadi’s way is ‘satta’grah and not Satyagrah. “I am a Hindu and not Hindutvawadi,” he added.
“Read any scripture — be in Gita, Upanishad, Ramayan, Mahabharat. Where is it written that poor and weak people are to be oppressed?” Rahul said. “If there is inflation in the country and there is suffering, then this has been done by Hindutvawadis,” he went on. “Lord Krishna did not tell Arjun to kill brothers for power. It is written in the Gita that you fight for the truth even if you have to die,” Rahul said.
Owaisi’s AIMIM is believed to be a B-team of the BJP for it has plans to foray into places where the Congress appeared to be weak.
For instance, Gujarat. Without having any mass base at all, the AIMIM contested the local body elections in the State in February and bagged as many as 24 seats, including seven in Ahmedabad city, and the rest in Godhra, Modasa as well as Bharuch. All these seats were with the Congress party.
The party effectively split the votes of the minorities, knowing well that it had not even fielded enough candidates in any civic body to be able to capture power.
Similarly, Owaisi has plans to foray into the March-April Uttar Pradesh elections where the Samajwadi Party, the Congress and even the Bahujan Samaj Party are trying to woo the minorities. The party plans to try its hand out even in Rajasthan.
Mr Owaisi is not gaining any traction amongst the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh.