New Delhi: The CPI(M) said Wednesday that everything Mahatma Gandhi stood for as the leader of India’s freedom struggle is now coming under assault.
In two articles in party mouthpiece ‘People’s Democracy’, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and politburo member Prakash Karat highlighted Mahatma Gandhi’s vision in the backdrop of the situation prevailing in the country.
Prakash Karat said in his piece that had Gandhi been alive today, he would have sat on an indefinite hunger strike against the mob lynching of innocent people accused of cow slaughter. “Because for him, even a single act of violence against an innocent man was an anathema,” Prakash Karat wrote.
Sitaram Yechury said that Gandhi was embraced by all classes of society.
“This unrivalled leader of the Indian people would often be living in the house of one of the biggest capitalists in India, Ghanshyam Das Birla. It was at his house in New Delhi that Gandhiji was assassinated by the bullets of a Hindu fanatic January 30, 1948. Is there no contradiction in the fact that Gandhiji was embraced, both, by the vast mass of the poor Indian people and by their exploiters – the capitalists and the landlords?
“In today’s context, this 150th birth anniversary observation acquires crucial importance. All that Gandhiji stood for as the leader of India’s freedom struggle is now coming under assault. Gandhiji’s consistent stand on anti-imperialism; his upholding of secularism; his struggles against untouchability and for social justice – the principles that eventually formed the basis of the Indian Constitution – are all being undermined today,” Yechury stated.
Yechury further alleged that corporate-communal alliance has come into dominance, vigorously propagating the ideology of aggrandizing nationalism, putting the ‘nation’ and its interests above the people, demanding sacrifices from them, including the forfeiture of their democratic rights in the name of the ‘nation’.
“Recently, when the amendments to the National Investigation Agency Act were being considered by the Lok Sabha, the Home Minister thundered that those who opposed the amendments are supporting terrorism and protecting terrorists!
“These draconian amendments severely impinge on the democratic rights and civil liberties of all individuals. Any expression of dissent against the BJP government and its policies can lead to the arrest and detention, on the grounds of being ‘anti-national’- the legalisation of a ‘Police State’,” alleged Yechury.
PTI
