Gandhinagar: Speaking at the party’s ‘Samvidhan Gaurav Abhiyan’ programme in Ahmedabad on Sunday, BJP national president and Union minister J P Nadda said that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has no knowledge of history and attempts were made by his father, grandmother and great-grandfather to tamper with the Constitution.
Nadda also attacked Rahul Gandhi for using the term “Indian state” in a comment aimed against the Union govt, BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). “Today our Congress leader says ‘fighting against the Indian state’. He has no knowledge of history, nor does he have anything to do with it,” Nadda said.
“Gandhi recently said the BJP and RSS captured every single institution in this country and we are now fighting the BJP, the RSS, and the Indian state itself. We should remember who tampered with the Constitution, and tried to destroy its basic provisions, as well as who protected the Constitution, and who did the work of protecting and highlighting the ideas of Babasaheb Ambedkar,” the BJP president told party workers.
Nadda said that Rahul Gandhi often holds up a copy of the Constitution at his rallies to attack the BJP. “He does not know what his father (Rajiv Gandhi), great-grandfather (Jawaharlal Nehru), and grandmother (Indira Gandhi) did. He should know these things,” Nadda said.
Terming Congress leaders as “bad” and BJP leaders as “good”, Nadda said that Articles 370 and 35 (A) were implemented by India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru despite Ambedkar’s opposition, and these provisions deprived the people of Jammu and Kashmir of basic rights enshrined in the Constitution.
Nadda said that these provisions were scrapped after Narendra Modi became Prime Minister. “You must understand the difference between the bad and the good lot. When you made Modi the prime minister, then on Aug 6, 2019, Modi’s willpower and Amit Shah’s strategy helped scrap Article 370,” Nadda said.
Referring to the Emergency, Nadda said Indira Gandhi tampered with the Constitution and sent 1.35 lakh people to jail, in the process destroying many families. “Many of these people were from our ideology,” he claimed. He cited the 39th and 42nd constitutional amendments passed during the Emergency . “Indira Gandhi wanted to mislead the country by raising tempting slogans. Therefore, she added the words secularism and socialism in the Constitution,” Nadda said.