Gujarat Congress president Jagdish Thakor recently made a statement saying that Congress was committed to minorities and its empowerment. On Friday morning, rowdies from Bajrang Dal stormed at the Congress headquarters near Kochhrab Ashram in Paldi and wrote Haj House outside it.
Vibes of India looks into the controversy.
What was Jagdish Thakor’s statement?
Jagdish Thakor, in a program organised by the Minorities Department of the Congress party, earlier this week, said that former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had asserted that first right in the treasury of the country belonged to disadvantaged people including minorities. Thakor had said that his party knows how much damage it had to suffer by saying this but still the party hasn’t compromised on its ideology. Dr Manmohan Singh was a Sikh, classified as a minority along with Jains, Christians and Muslims, among many others in India.
Jagdish Thakor also said every political party should have a separate manifesto for minorities. He had said that India is a secular country and the world’s larget democracy and it was up to the majority population to safeguard the rights of minorities.
Former PM Manmohan Singh’s statement was (mis)used by BJP in the run-up to the 2014 elections to make a point that Congress was committed to politics of appeasement.
Bajrang Dal’s Statement:
Gujarat Bajrang Dal President Jwalit Mehta told mediapersons that Congress was indulging in politics of appeasement and was trying to woo Muslims. Bajrang Dal bracketed all minorities including Jains and Sikhs as Muslims. He did not clarify on why they were doing that. Trying to score brownie points, Jwalit said Congress was
Consistently losing ground and now had just two States, Rajasthan and Chhatisgarh in its’ kitty. The Bajrang Dal has accepted that they wrote Haj House outside Congress office in Ahmedabad.
Background
It must be noted that presence in Muslim dominated areas in Gujarat has put the Congress on a high alert. AIMIM bagged 24 seats in the elections to the local bodies in Gujarat in February and including 11 in Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and the rest in semi-urban and rural areas of Godhra in central Gujarat and Modasa in North Gujarat. This could have triggered the Congress, AIMIM observers claim.
However as Maulin Shah, an Amdavadi wrote on Twitter:
