By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Launching an attack on RSS-BJP, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that the right wing spreading hatred and killing innocent people is not Hinduism but Hindutva. He clarified that the two are different concepts.
Addressing an All India Congress Committee orientation programme at Sevagram Ashram in Wardha, Rahul said that ideological fight has become very important post 2014 and the divisive and hateful ideology of RSS-BJP has overshadowed the ‘loving, affectionate and nationalistic ideology’ of the Congress.
“We have to accept this and our ideology is alive and vibrant and overshadowed, partly because of the complete capture of the media and the Indian nation and also because we have not propagated our ideology among our own people aggressively,” he said.
His remarks come after senior party leader Salman Khurshid in his book equated Hindutva with ISIS and Jihadist Islam, which veteran party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad called is factually wrong and an exaggeration.
Rahul observed that Hindutva and Hinduism are two different concepts, adding that otherwise, there would have been no need to use separate words to describe both.
“Is Hinduism about beating a Sikh or a Muslim? Hindutva, of course, is. But is Hinduism about killing…in which book is it written? I have read the Upanishads. I have not seen it. Where is it written that you should kill an innocent man? I am unable to find this in Hindu scriptures, Islamic scriptures, Sikh scriptures. I can see it in Hindutva though,” he said.
The MP from Kerela’s Wayanad accepted that the Congress party did not propagate its ideology properly and called for mandatory training at all levels of the party.
“The Congress ideology…the ideology it follows, has been existing in India for thousands of years. Just like the RSS has its icons, the Congress has its own icons… They are different icons. But, we have them,. It is about bringing in this ideological ocean and allowing our people to swim in it,” he said.
Meanwhile, the BJP claimed on Friday that the Congress leadership nurses “pathological hatred” for Hinduism as it hit out at Rahul Gandhi for his criticism of Hindutva, saying it is at his behest that Congress leaders like Salman Khurshid, Shashi Tharoor and P Chidambaram have allegedly targeted the religion.
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra attacked Gandhi after the Congress leader sought to draw a distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva, a term widely used by the RSS, and alleged that the RSS-BJP ideology was about spreading hate.
Patra alleged that Gandhi has a history of making critical comments about Hinduism and its culture.
It is in the character of the Congress and the Gandhi family to attack Hinduism at every opportunity, he said.
Citing terms like Hindu Pakistan, Hindu Taliban and saffron terror used by Congress leaders Tharoor and Chidambaram, he said they make these remarks at Gandhi’s behest.
He also referred to Digvijay Singh and Mani Shankar Aiyar in this context.
“What they say is not a coincidence but an experiment. And the headmaster of this experimental lab is Rahul Gandhi. There is a pathological hatred for Hinduism among Congress leaders, and they get traction for this from the Gandhi family,” he alleged.
Patra also referred to a comment of Rahul Gandhi, which had found a mention in the WikiLeaks in 2010, that Hindu extremist groups could pose a bigger danger to India than Islamic terror organisation and some other remarks to attack him.
Gandhi had linked atrocities against women to Indian culture, he claimed.
The BJP’s attack on Gandhi came a day after the ruling party had slammed the opposition party over its leader Salman Khurshid comparing Hindutva with the jihadist Islam of terrorist groups such as ISIS and Boko Haram in his latest book.
It is clear that Khurshid has also endorsed what Rahul Gandhi has been saying, Patra said.
People of India will never forgive the Congress, he said.
Gandhi on Friday said his party’s ideology is like a “beautiful jewel” with an unending power inside it, but it has been overshadowed by the BJP, and maintained Hindu and Hindutva are different concepts.
Gandhi was addressing online a four-day ‘AICC orientation programme’ organised at Sevagram Ashram in Wardha in Maharashtra.
Congress representatives from across the states are participating in the programme.
Patra said seeking apology from him would be irrelevant.
The Congress leader, he alleged, has violated constitutional tenets with his remarks that spread “hate” in society.
The Congress, he said, had also tried to delay the court hearing in the Ram temple case and had, when in power, questioned the existence of Lord Ram.
To a question about the Congress drawing a distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva, Patra shot back, “Can they talk on similar lines about other religions? Of course not. They cannot talk of similar issues in any other religion. The question is why do they talk ill of Hinduism all the time.”
Congress on Friday alleged that Facebook was being used as a weapon by the BJP to spread hate and fake news in the country and demanded that a JPC probe be conducted on the issue and laws be enacted to restrict Facebook and WhatsApp.
The party also alleged that India’s democracy is being manipulated by an American technology company and demanded that it holds an independent inquiry into the issue.
Congress leaders Rohan Gupta and Praveen Chakravarty said at a joint press conference that it is time Facebook stops being used as a weapon by the BJP to spread hate that threatens the country’s unity.
The Congress also wrote to Facebook chairman Mark Zuckerberg and asked him to conduct an independent inquiry to probe charges of hate speech and fake news being spread through Facebook and WhatsApp in India.
“I strongly urge you to conduct an internal enquiry into the functioning of Facebook India and release the findings to the public.
It is your responsibility as the head of this organisation to hold those responsible for betraying our people accountable for their actions,” Gupta, who heads the social media department of Congress, said in his letter to Zuckerberg.
“Facebook has become a weapon of the BJP in spreading hatred in the country. There is an attempt to attack the unity of our country and everyone has to understand this and fight it together,” he told reporters here.
“We demand from Facebook that there should be an independent inquiry on the hate speech being spread through Facebook in the last two years and why Facebook reduced its budget for identifying hate speech and why action was not initiated on issues raised internally on the issue by its own employees,” Gupta also said.
Chakravarty, who heads the AICC Technology and Data cell, said this issue about Facebook is a very serious one and everyone has to fight it together.
Citing an internal report statement, he said that after the Pulwama terror attack “an average Facebook user in India has seen more images of dead people in their Facebook account than they saw in their entire lifetime on Facebook”.
This is besides what is happening on WhatsApp which is private, he said.
“The world’s largest democracy is being manipulated by an American technology company. This is not anymore about the Congress or the BJP or even politics. This is about the sanctity of our democracy. This is about India and Indians. Are we going to accept this sort of control of our society by foreign technology companies,” Chakravarty asked.
Noting that it is time to come together as a nation and resist this, he said, Parliament which is elected by the people of India has a responsibility to act on this issue.
“A JPC must be set up to probe into this issue, as we have previously asked for. The Parliamentary Standing Committee must summon Facebook and other executives to investigate this, just as they have done in other democracies like the US and the UK. And, Laws must be legislated to restrict Facebook and WhatasApp in India,” Chakravarty said.
Gupta said the country’s trust is being betrayed by Facebook.
He also said people of the country are also demanding answers from the BJP for using social media players to spread hate.
He also alleged that Facebook has undermined its own team’s internal report and reduced the budget for controlling hate speech even when such content has increased 80 percent in the last few months.
Facebook used only 9 percent of its budget to stop and check hate speech in its content, especially in Hindi speaking India, he alleged.
In his letter to Zuckerberg, Gupta said there is an apparent and evident bias that the company has shown in India towards the ruling dispensation despite their proclivity for sharing hate speech, misinformation, fake news and inflammatory content on your platform.
He said there is evidence that points to the negligence of Facebook in controlling this hate speech and deliberately ignoring internal documents raising concerns over the same issues.
“It has also been revealed that your cost cutting approach towards hate review led to a drastic and rapid increase in such content over the last two years,” he said, adding that it is unfortunate that Facebook continues to favour its business interests over the lives and safety of your users in a country which has over 370 million users.
(With PTI Inputs)
