Ever since the disqualification of Congress scion Rahul Gandhi as a Lok Sabha MP, the Congress party has been accusing the Narendra Modi government of political vendetta. Rahul Gandhi who represented the Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency in Kerala was disqualified after a Surat court on March 23, 2023, convicted him in connection with a 2019 criminal defamation case filed against him over his “Modi surname” remarks and awarded him a two-year jail sentence. He was automatically disqualified as per section 8(3) of the Representation of the People Act.
After asserting that the Congress leader is a ‘voice of India’, the Congress party has now compared Rahul Gandhi with Lord Rama.
Augmenting his ‘Tapasya’, Pawan Khera, the Chairman of the Congress part’s Media and Publicity Department took to Twitter to apparently draw parallels between the incident in Lord Rama’s life wherein he had to leave his home for vanvas and the present scenario of Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification as he has been asked to vacate his government bungalow as per the law.
“Just think, if Lord Ram had not left his house, would the demons have come to an end?” Khera tweeted in Hindi.
ज़रा सोचिए, प्रभु राम अगर घर नहीं छोड़ते तो क्या राक्षसों का अंत हो पाता?
— Pawan Khera 🇮🇳 (@Pawankhera) March 30, 2023
Interestingly, last year Pawan Khera had a meltdown after the Congress leadership overlooked him for the Rajya Sabha nominations. The party had favoured Imran Pratapgarhi and Randeep Surjewala amongst others for the Upper House of the Parliament over Khera, following which Pawan Khera had expressed disappointment.
After Congress Party released a list of its ten candidates from seven states for the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha, in a cryptic tweet, Pawan Khera wrote in Hindi, “My penance must have been lacking somewhere”.
The Congress loyalist was weeks later bestowed with a consolation prize by appointing him as the Chairman of Media and Publicity in the new Communications Department of the party.
While Congress today argues that democracy is under threat, freedom of expression is attacked, etc, the party’s internal democracy and tolerance of dissent is evident in the fact that Pawan Khera recently apologised for his ‘Tapasya’ tweet. While making an assertion that nothing is bigger than Rahul Gandhi’s Tapasya Khera apologized for his ‘selfish’ statement.
On Sunday while addressing a rally during a protest at Rajghat against Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification from the Lok Sabha, Khera said, “I want to apologize to you all and to my leadership for my selfish statement that “shayad meri tapasya mein kuch kami reh gayi” after I did not get a Rajya Sabha seat. Now that I see Rahul Gandhi shunning power and still continuing his tapasya, what could be bigger than that.”
Today, maybe out of political compulsion or a changed socio-political scenario, the Congress leaders are remembering Lord Rama, however, it has been a known fact that for over ten years, the Congress party has denied the existence of Lord Rama.
Congress affidavit denying Lord Rama’s existence
It is worth mentioning that back in September 2007 the Congress-led UPA 1 Central government had said that there is no historical proof of Lord Rama’s existence.
An affidavit filed by the Congress-led government read, “Valmiki Ramayana and Ramcharitmanas admittedly form an important part of ancient Indian literature, but these cannot be said to be historical records to incontrovertibly prove the existence of the characters and occurrences of events depicted therein.” The affidavit was filed to register the UPA government’s opposition to the demand to scrap the Sethusamudram project as it would damage the Ram Setu. In 2018, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor had asserted that “no good Hindu would want a Ram Mandir at the Babri site.”
Congress leader Kumar Ketkar claimed ‘Ram exists because of Ramayana’
In 2020, Congress leader Kumar Ketkar during a programme on Zee News ahead of the Bhoomi Poojan at the Ram Temple site in August denied the historical existence of Shri Ram and cast aspersions about the Hindu God being a creation of literature.
When he was asked by the anchor whether he or the Congress party now believes in the existence of Lord Rama or not, Ketkar claimed, “Ram exists because of Ramayan. However, a conclusion is yet to be reached on whether Ram is the creation of history or literature. Valmiki wrote a great epic and its impact was felt both in India and abroad. But, I don’t know if he existed in history.”
Congress Mani Shankar Aiyar questioned the birth of Lord Rama at Ayodhya
Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar who has courted controversy on multiple occasions owing to his contentious statements had in 2019 questioned the birth of Lord Ram at Ayodhya.
On January 7, 2019, at an event organized by the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) in New Delhi called ‘Ek Shaam Babri Masjid Ki Naam,’ Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar questioned the birth of Lord Ram at Ayodhya, asking how someone could be so certain that Lord Ram was born at that historic site.
#WATCH Mani Shankar Aiyar, Congress, speaks on #RamMandir at ‘Ek Shaam Babri Masjid Ke Naam’ programme organised by Social Democratic Party of India in Delhi pic.twitter.com/QtckaUdW70
— ANI (@ANI) January 7, 2019
“What do you mean mandir wahin banayenge? King Dasharatha was a big king and it is believed he had as many as 10,000 rooms in his palace. Who knows which room was where? And hence they say that because we think that our Lord Ram was born here, and hence the temple should be built there, and because there is a masjid there, we will first demolish it and then build a temple at that place?” Aiyar said in 2019.
राम सिया राम सिया राम जय जय राम pic.twitter.com/kC3vriEYcI
— Congress (@INCIndia) March 30, 2023
The gradual shift from opposing the construction of Ram Temple, denying Lord Ram’s existence to the Congress scion’s electoral temple runs and the desperate attempts at portraying Rahul Gandhi as a devote ‘Tapasvi’ Hindu and a Ram Bhakt as evident in this tweeted posted by the official Twitter handle of Congress, the party is leaving no stone unturned to lure Hindus into voting for them.
