Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said no regime had honoured BR Ambedkar like his government has, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday took a jibe at PM Modi and BJP’s ideology.
While attaching a collage of photos in his tweet which contained PM Modi’s tweet on honouring Ambedkar and multiple photos of vandalised statues of the Dalit icon, Gandhi said that “the oppressive ideology, to which PM Modi belongs, can never respect Dalits and Ambedkar”.
He also mocked BJP and RSS’s narrative of respecting BR Ambedkar with photo collage and went on to highlight them as examples of their respect.
मोदीजी, जिस दमनकारी विचारधारा से आप आते हैं वो दलितों और बाबासाहेब का सम्मान कभी कर ही नहीं सकती| भाजपा/RSS विचारधारा द्वारा बाबासाहेब के सम्मान के कुछ उदाहरण… pic.twitter.com/7QXCKUoGMe
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) April 6, 2018
On 4 April, while speaking at a programme to mark the inauguration of a building of Western Court Annexe in Parliament complex, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that no regime had honoured BR Ambedkar like his government has.
PM Modi’s remarks had come after widespread protests, some of which turned violent, in different parts of the country over a Supreme Court verdict putting in place safeguards to prevent misuse of a law to prevent atrocities on SCs and STs.
“No government has, perhaps, given respect to Babasaheb the way our government has,” PM Modi had said.
He had said his government was walking the path shown by Ambedkar and asked every political group to try and do the same for the country’s development.
“At the core of Ambedkar’s ideals is harmony and togetherness. Working for the poorest of the poor is our mission.”
PM Modi had also lamented that everyone had dragged Ambedkar’s name for political gains. He said it was his government that completed the Ambedkar international centre though the idea was conceived when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister.
The 26, Alipur Road house, where the Dalit icon died would be dedicated to the nation as a memorial on 13 April on the eve of his birth anniversary, Modi said.
Hitting out at the Congress-led UPA, PM Modi said the previous government had dragged its feet on the project for years.
“But we completed projects at stipulated time period,” he said, noting that his government was committed to ‘sabka saath sabka vikas’.
(With agency inputs)