Lok Sabha MP from Tamil Nadu Sasikanth Senthil said that the country is currently witnessing an ideological fight and not an organisational fight, at an event held by Jagrutha Karnataka in Bengaluru.
“It’s not right to see this fight as between BJP and Congress. It’s a fight between two mindsets or two ideologies. One ideology believes in hierarchy. The other believes in equity,” Senthil said.
“Many people think the independence movement was to send the British out. But that was only a small reason. The larger fight was against inequity and hierarchy. You take any leader - Bhagat Singh, Subhash Chandra Bose, Gandhiji, Ambedkar – their methods might have been different, but their fight was against hierarchy,” he added.
The event which focused on the theme “How to reshape politics to reclaim the Idea of India” was held by Jagrutha Karnataka as part of its “Back to Constitution” series earlier this week.
Fighting caste system
Bringing up the issue of Caste Census, Senthil noted that people from SC, ST, OBC and MBC communities stood to benefit the most from it, but BJP, which claims to be the saviour of Hindus, did not support this.
Programmes like the National Education Policy introduced by the BJP government only help to bolster the caste system, he said, accusing the RSS and the BJP of trying to bring back the caste hierarchies that were demolished by the Constitution.
He further alleged that the RSS did not take part in the freedom movement not because they didn’t want the British to leave India, but because they feared the establishment of an equitable society following that.
“When the Constitution was drafted, they could not agree with it as it brought in equity. Since then, they have been waiting to change it... They instilled fear in people, portrayed Muslims as villains and started a narrative. This formula works electorally,” Senthil argued.
“But Muslims are not their original target. The original target is the majority of the Hindus, the people who were empowered in the last 75 years by the Constitution, people like me,” said Senthil, who hails from a Dalit family.
The idea of India
Lok Sabha MP from Tiruvallur in Tamil Nadu and a former Karnataka cadre IAS officer, Senthil resigned from his bureaucratic position in 2019 saying it was “unethical” on his part to continue as a civil servant when “fundamental building blocks of diverse democracy are being compromised.”
“I come from Tamil Nadu where we are very passionate about the Tamil language. But you have invited me and I’m here talking to you in Kannada. This is the idea of India... The spirit of India is in appreciating these differences and the Constitution gives it a legal framework,” he said.
A huge void
Although it was the responsibility of political parties to instil a sense of nation-building in people, he admitted that it was not given due importance earlier. The general public too shied away from mainstream politics leaving a huge void, he pointed out.
“We forgot to celebrate our Constitution... But it’s time to change all that... I haven’t come across a document better than the Constitution to fight the fascist forces,” he said adding that the Congress is doing its best to go back to people and be a people’s movement.
