Congress President Rahul Gandhi. (PTI Photo/File)
The Congress on Tuesday said it will roll out campaigns as part of what it described as a “new freedom struggle” on Gandhian lines to “combat the forces of divisiveness and prejudice” in the run-up to elections.
A resolution passed at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting at Mahadev Bhavan here on Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary said that the government at the Centre is doing politics of “threat and intimidation, polarisation, crushing debate and dissent and imposing artificial uniformity on a nation of extraordinary diversity, of hate and vendetta, subversion of constitutional values, lies, deceit, fraud and subterfuge”.
It said that “today, a new freedom struggle is the urgent need of the hour to combat the forces of divisiveness and prejudice”.
The party organised the meeting at Sevagram, where a CWC meeting in July 1942 had announced ‘Chale Jao’ campaign against the British. The CWC meeting was presided over by Rahul Gandhi and attended among others by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. They also participated in a prayer meeting at Sevagram Ashram.
“One may borrow the Mahatma’s spectacles for publicity campaign, but implementing his vision will remain unfulfilled unless his principles are followed. The CWC resolves to expose the hollowness and doublespeak of the ideologies and organisations who have never believed in Gandhi’s path of truth, tolerance, harmony and non-violence,” the resolution said.
“It is only the Congress that truly embodies the ethos of Bharat that is fundamentally inclusive, liberal, secular and assimilative of India’s plurality. Only the Congress is committed to justice, liberty, equality and fraternity as led down in Constitution. This fundamental message must be renewed and propagated to all corners of India by all Congressmen. Elections will come and go but the ideological battle has to be relentless. The CWC rededicates the Congress to this sacred task,” it added.
The other resolution passed at the meeting was about famers. It condemned the “lathi-charge” on farmers who had gone Delhi to protest. “The farmers had come after travelling hundreds of kilometres to press their demands on the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi… Lal Bahadur Shastri, whose birth anniversary is also being celebrated today, had given the slogan of ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’. But the Modi government unleased a barbaric attack on the agitating farmers. The Congress strongly condemns it and resolves that it will always stand to protect the farmers’ interest and welfare,” it said.