Hyderabad: Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi used the birthday of UoH scholar Rohith Vemula on Saturday to attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the RSS.
“My main opposition to Mr Narendra Modi and the RSS is that they are trying to crush the spirit of Indian students by imposing one idea. Please speak about your idea, talk about your idea, put your idea in the market place of ideas. If all these students accept your idea I am fine with it. But please do not force your idea on these students,” Mr Gandhi said while addressing students and the family of Rohith at the UoH.
“Give them their dignity and respect. They are not foolish people. They have more than enough understanding of the world and they do not need anyone including me to tell them what to do,” he said.
Mr Gandhi said the killers of Rohith Vemula were the same people who did not desire that Mahatma Gandhi should speak the truth loudly and killed him.
Drawing a parallel between Rohith’s suicide and Mahatma Gandhi’s assasination, he said “what has happened here is exactly what was done to Gandhiji.”
“Gandhiji was killed by the same forces which did not allow him to speak the truth he wanted to say. It is exactly the same thing that has happened to Rohith...they did not want him to speak the truth that he saw in this institution,” he said.
Mr Gandhi said, “There is a link, Mr Narendra Modi, between what is going on in this university, between this discrimination and the idea of Make in India, Connecting India and Startup India. If you have an India where discrimination is taking place, people are being crushed based on who they are and where they come from you can never ever be able to build a modern economy.”
Mr Gandhi demanded that a law be enacted on the lines of demands by UoH students to fight discrimination in educational institutions.
“To advance this country, to make it powerful, study this proposition, look into the possibilities of passing this law because if you do not look into these possibilities the students will look into it,” he told Mr Modi.
In a final jibe at the PM and Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya, Mr Gandhi said, “This country is made up of Indian people. Nobody here is anti-national. When you call the poor boy (Rohith Vemula) anti-national you are not only doing disservice to him but to everybody.”
Answering his critics, Mr Gandhi said he had returned to the protest venue because the students had invited him.
