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The speech by Lok Sabha leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi on June 8, delivered at the INDIA alliance meeting in Delhi flagged a profoundly seminal point that the Congress party represented a resistance movement in defence of the equality of all Indians. Unlike numerous political parties in India, he claimed the Congress “was never built using the infrastructure and protection of the Indian State”. According to him, the day Mahatma Gandhi set the goal for achieving independence of India from British rule. from that date the Congress transformed itself from a political formation to a resistance movement.

British rule was marked, among others, by the stifling of liberties of the people, devastation of their livelihood and the hostile character of the Indian state controlled by colonial rulers and employed against Indians and freedom fighters with no remedy available to address people’s grievances.

Rahul dispelled the notions of his alliance partners the Samajwadi Party (SP), the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), etc. that the institutions enshrined in the Constitution would work. He did so by harping on the point that the Indian state under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had stopped providing a fair and playing field for the neutral functioning of those institutions.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

“The BJP controls the institutions of........

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