Foil Sangh Parivar’s Plan to Undermine I-Day, Push Hindu Rashtra Narrative Anew: Yechury

Kolkata:  A narrative for building a Hindu Rashtra, which even undermines the Independence Day of our country, is being pushed afresh by forces led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), said Sitaram Yechury, general secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist) in here on Wednesday.

Addressing banking sector employees on the occasion 100th birth anniversary of Ashis Sen, the founding general secretary of the Bank Employees’ Federation of India (BEFI), Yechury accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre of undermining August 15, by making August 5 a ‘bigger’ day, the day when Jammu & Kashmir’s state status was snatched away. They also aimed to finish the Central Vista by August 5, 2022, he said, adding that the deadline would now be missed due to  the pandemic.

“The focus was to promote August 5, as the date of real freedom of the country,” said  Yechury.

‘Right now, the basic tenets of the Constitution are being violated day in and day out,” he said.

He said that “if you want to  do a concrete analysis  of concrete conditions then you have to go back to 1920, during the years of the freedom struggle’  .

“Three visions emerged about what is going to happen after India becomes a free country. Congress at that time advocated keeping in mind the diversity of the country that India should be a secular, democratic republic. On the other side were the communists who said that based on the secular, democratic republic further struggles should be carried on to make India’s political freedom into economic freedom and move towards socialism.  A third vision, carried by individuals such as Jinnah and by RSS, was to decide the character of the state by the religious affinity of the people it is inhabited with. Jinnah made Pakistan with that vision, but in India,  the unity in  diversity concept persisted  and Gandhi, with his towering personality  was the main roadblock, for these  forces to make India into a Hindu Rashtra”

Yechury said  Gandhi ji was soon assassinated for his role  and for leading  India  to being a secular, democratic republic, adding that the present situation unfolding was a continuance of this very battle.

“What should be the outcome of this battle depends on all of us.  Hindu Rashtra can only be made  if the Constitution of the country is undermined’, the CPI(M) general secretary added.

Yechury said under the present regime, “social justice is being denied with laws like UAPA and sedition laws  whereby  activists are languishing in jail for three years without trial,”.

On the country’s economic sovereignty, he pointed out that the opposite of what happened after bank nationalisation was happening now.

The idea of bank nationalisation and the purpose it served was to reach banking transactions to the poorest of the poor. "During the time of the first United Progressive Alliance government, schemes like MGNREGA, were taken up which were linked through the banking system. Now, even after the pandemic crisis, when people are in dire straits, allocation on a scheme like MGNREGA has been diluted by 25%," he added.

He said this was despite the fact that globally 60% of the poor who have have been forced into extreme poverty were from India.

 “67% of our country’s wealth is held by the 10 richest  Indians. These are the inequalities that are happening… If it does not perform then people running the government should be replaced”, he added.

Yechury also said that federalism was being negated  and alleged that “arms like the  judiciary are sitting idle on issues  like  abrogation of Article 370 and on electoral bonds which has brought unheard corrupt practices  into the political system.”

Highlighting the farmers’ movement, Yechury said: ‘The historic farmers' struggle forced the  government to repeal the three farm laws and that is a definitive victory for the farmers .”

“These are not piecemeal struggles, the struggles of the agricultural sector must be amalgamated with that of the workers’ movement. These resistances will be blocked by communal polarisation by the same forces,” he cautioned.

Yechury also paid rich tributes to Ashis Sen and spoke about his association with the departed leader of the banking sector employees’ movement in the 1980s.

Sen joined the Kolkata office of Reserve Bank of India in 1944, and in 1949 he was elected the secretary of RBI Employees Association. He later rose to become one of the tallest leaders of the banking sector employees’ movement in the country and was also the founding secretary of BEFI. Later, as member of the Rajya Sabha in (1988-94), he was always eloquent in the interest of bank employees and the working class and raised issues that concerned them.