Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s take on caste politics, and asked why Mr. Modi asserted his own Other Backward Classes (OBC) identity repeatedly if by his own admission “poverty was the biggest caste’.
Addressing two public meetings in Jagdalpur and Kharasia in Chhattisgarh, Mr. Gandhi accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of treating tribals as animals, as he raised the ‘adivasi’ versus ‘vanvasi’ nomenclature issue yet again in the poll-bound State nearly a third of whose population comprises tribals.
“Today, in his speech, he [Mr. Modi] said there was only one caste in the country and that was India’s poor. That means in his new speech he is saying that in this country, there are no Dalits, no adivasi, no backwards and we all know that there are tribals in the country, there are tribal languages, there is tribal culture, there is tribal history, there are Dalits. Dalits are insulted, they are troubled on a daily basis, the backward are not getting their due rights..,” Mr. Gandhi said.
“...and today the Prime Minister of India is saying that India has only one caste, and that is poor. If there is only one caste, why do you call yourself an OBC. Why do you say in every speech that you come from the OBCs?” he asked, referring to the contents of Mr. Modi’s speech made in Durg earlier in the day.
The former Congress President also said that Mr. Modi used to call tribals vanvasi [forest dwellers] in all his speeches, and added that while he had switched to adivasi his mindset was the same. Referring to the Sidhi urination incident in Madhya Pradesh reported earlier this year, Mr. Gandhi said that the BJP leaders urinated on tribal youth, then made the video capturing the same viral.
“They want to show the tribals where their place should be, hence these people have coined the word vanvasi for you. Tribal culture, traditions and customs are being attacked with the word ‘forest dwellers’,” he said.
Attacking Mr. Modi over his purported relations with businessman Gautam Adani, Mr. Gandhi said that the Congress party cancelled an iron ore project taken up by the conglomerate because the local tribals did not want it there. He added that the party had fulfilled its promises made to the tribals.
“We brought Tribal Bill, PESA Act, Land Acquisition Bill in which it was clearly written that no one can take the land of tribals unless the Gram Sabha gives permission. We had said that if any industrialist did not start his industry within 5 years, then their land would be returned to the tribals. We had made this promise which we also kept,” he said.