Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in a hard-hitting speech attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party for the recent atrocities in the country.
Rahul was addressing a function in Bengaluru on Monday to release the commemorative edition of the National Herald. He said truth is being completely muzzled by the ones in power. “Power of truth is being completely replaced by the truth of power, anybody who tries to stand for truth is pushed aside”, he said how he was denied entry into Madhya Pradesh without any reason.
Rahul Gandhi also accused the Central Government of “forcing everyone to silence with Dalits being beaten up, minorities frightened and journalists and bureaucrats threatened.”
Gandhi alleged that thousands of journalists were not being allowed to write what they wanted to. “They (journalists) tell me that they are not being allowed to write what they want to,” he said.
Recollecting a Soviet poet (Yevgeny Yevtushenko), who said, “When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie,” Gandhi said, “This is what the government is trying to do.” “...Everybody knows what the truth is. But they are scared to say it,” he said at the function where Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari released the National Herald’s commemorative publication to celebrate 70 years of India’s independence.
The Congress vice-president recalled that when the editor of National Herald approached him recently, he told him that there might be times when the paper would want to write things against him or his party or its policies, but “you (editor) should be absolutely comfortable. That is the spirit we expect from National Herald.” “National Herald has a strong spirit. It is not going to be silenced,” he added.
Efforts to revive National Herald started amid a legal battle launched by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who has filed a criminal complaint against Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and others.
In his private criminal complaint, Swamy has accused the Gandhis and others of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds by paying only Rs50 lakh, through which Young Indian Pvt ltd (YI) obtained the right to recover Rs90.25 crore, which its publisher, Associate Journals ltd (AJl), owed to the Congress party.
The Gandhis and the other accused — Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda — have denied the allegations levelled against them. The Delhi High Court had recently declined to stay the Income-Tax proceedings against Young India ltd in the National Herald case.