Prominent Citizens & Civil Society Organizations condemn the targeting of Tushar Gandhi by a mob of the RSS & BJP, who further threaten that he be arrested.
The entire nation is shocked and appalled at the fact that Tushar Gandhi has been heckled by an RSS/BJP mob at a meeting in Kerala, where they demanded that he apologise & retract his statement. Tushar Gandhi did neither.
Tushar Gandhi had been invited at the programme in Neyyanttinkara, in Thiruvanantapuram, to mark a 100 years of the momentous event when Mahatma Gandhi met Shri Narayan Guru, a progressive reformer & a revered figure in Kerala, as he is across the country. Tushar Gandhi also unveiled the statue of P. Gopinathan Nair, the late veteran Gandhian.
During his speech Tushar Gandhi, who works tirelessly for the cause of communal harmony & fearlessly opposes the politics of hate, went on to say that, “We will be able to defeat the BJP, but the RSS is poison. They are trying to destroy the soul of the country. We should be fearful about that because if the soul is lost, everything is lost.”
Following the speech, a group of RSS-BJP workers demanded that Tushar Gandhi take back his words, apologise & they raised slogans against him and tried to stop his car. Tushar Gandhi refused to withdraw his statement and drove away after raising the slogan, “Gandhi ki jai”. On asked to file a case against the agitators, Tushar Gandhi refused to do so.
The incident has created a political storm with secular parties across the spectrum condemning this vile act by the RSS/BJP workers.
Former Union Minister of State and BJP leader V. Muraleedharan demanded that Tushar Gandhi be arrested for his statements based on the BJP’s complaint.
This is part of a larger pattern of intimidation, where prominent personalities like Tushar Gandhi are heckled, mobbed, trolled & threatened. The fascist nature of the RSS-BJP is evident for all to see.
Today, despite the odds, Tushar Gandhi, like his great-grandfather Mahatma Gandhi, remains committed to the cause of communal harmony, even as the RSS-BJP continue to spread hate & indulging in hate crimes & divisive politics. Tushar Gandhi represents that very legacy of our Freedom Movement, of Bapu, the legacy of striving for harmony & and peace between the various communities of India, thus strengthening our nation.
Today, Tushar Gandhi is a symbol of those very values, as he traverses the nation & the world, addressing meetings, conducting padyatras, giving that very message.
We thus unequivocally state that we stand with Tushar Gandhi & condemn any form of intimidation or violence against him.
We, as the people of India, can see & perceive the threat & challenges that our society & our nation is faced with, and we will do the utmost to spread the message of love, unity & peace.
Jai Gandhi! Jai Bharat
Dr. G. G. Parikh, Medha Patkar, Prof. Anand Kumar, Prof. Ram Puniyani, Javed Anand, Shyam Dada Gaikwad, Teesta Setalwad, Anand Patwardhan, Adv. Prashant Bhushan, Dr. Sunilam, Kumar Prashant, Zakia Soman, Adv. Mihir Desai, Prof. Zeenat Shaukat Ali, Prof. Rakesh Rafique, Shabnam Hashmi, Irfan Engineer, Sandeep Pandey, Feroze Mithiborwala, Guddi S L, Sharad Kadam, Dhananjay Shinde, Santosh Ambekar, M. A. Khalid, Nuruddin Naik, Faraz Khan, Yashodhan Paranjpe, Ali Bhojani & Vanita Tondwalkar
