New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s remark, referring to Lord Ram as a mythological figure, has drawn a sharp response from the ruling BJP. Mr Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, made the remark during an interaction at a US university. He was at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and was asked a question.
Mr Gandhi said none of the great social reformers and political thinkers in India have been bigots. “If you look at all great Indian social reformers and political thinkers, Buddha, Guru Nanak, Basava in Karnataka, Narayana Guru in Kerala, (Jyotirao) Phule, Mahatma Gandhi and BR Ambedkar, you see one streak. None of these are bigots.
“All our mythological figures, Lord Ram was of that kind, he was forgiving, he was compassionate, I don’t consider what the BJP says to be the Hindu idea at all. I consider the Hindu idea to be much more pluralistic, much more embracing, much more affectionate, much more tolerant and open. There are people in every state and community who stood for those ideas, lived for those ideas and died for those ideas.
Targeting the BJP, he said, “I don’t view the BJP conception as a Hindu conception. In terms of thinking, they are a fringe group, now they have captured political power, they have got a huge amount of wealth and power, but they don’t represent the large majority of indian thinkers by any means,” Mr Gandhi said.
BJP leaders have now shared an eight-second clip from Mr Gandhi’s response, in which he referred to Lord Ram as a mythological figure, and targeted the Congress MP. “Insulting Hindus and Lord Ram has become the Congress party’s identity. Those who rejected Lord Ram’s existence through an affidavit, opposed the construction of Ram Temple, coined the ‘Hindu terror’ phrase, have now said Rahul Gandhi is ‘mythological’.
The affidavit Mr Poonawalla referred to was filed in the Supreme Court in 2007 by the then UPA government. “Valmiki Ramayana and Ramcharitmanas admittedly form an important part of ancient Indian literature, but these cannot be said to be historical records to incontrovertibly prove the existence of the characters and occurrences of events depicted therein,” the Manmohan Singh government had said in an affidavit in the Ram Janmabhoomi case.