By Cris
Snippets of the words exchanged between Mahatma Gandhi and Sree Narayana Guru must have scampered through his mind when Tushar Gandhi spoke at the centenary of their famous meeting in Kerala. It was on March 12, 1925, that the Mahatma rode south to Sivagiri Mutt from Vaikom in central Kerala. He had been in Vaikom to join the Satyagraha for freedom of movement of the lowered castes on the roads skirting the famous Mahadeva temple.
In Sivagiri, Gandhi met the revered social reformer Narayana Guru, and exchanged ideas on religion and caste, both wanting betterment of the oppressed people.
Tushar, the Mahatma’s great grandson, stood on a stage a hundred years later to commemorate the meeting and unveil the statue of Gandhian P Gopinathan in Thiruvananthapuram. In his speech, he derided the Hindutva powers led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its parent organisation the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for “inflicting the country with cancer” and “spreading it”. The RSS is poison, he said.
Outside the venue, RSS workers waited for his car, blocking it and raising slogans demanding that he take back his words. Tushar stoutly refused, and in return raised slogans for Gandhi.
Speaking to TNM two weeks after the event, he admitted that he was quite taken aback by such a reaction in Kerala — the state did not even have an electoral presence of the BJP until recently.
In 2016, O Rajagopal won them an Assembly seat for the first time, but BJP went back to zero seats in the next election. It was only last year that a BJP candidate managed to win a Lok Sabha seat from Kerala — Suresh Gopi from Thrissur. Currently, the party does not have a single Assembly constituency in the state despite leading the Union government for the third consecutive term.
Right wing in Kerala and the Empuraan row
“I was aware that the BJP has made inroads in Kerala, becoming quite a formidable force in the state. But I didn’t expect them to be this belligerent. They are becoming more and more so, even forcing Mohanlal to publicly apologise. It is worrying, and it needs to be taken note of,” Tushar said.
This story was originally published in thenewsminute.com. Read the full story here.
