Bengaluru : Opposition leader in Karnataka assembly Siddaramaiah taunted the BJP for calling him anti-Hindu by arguing that the BJP are angered over him for conducting Tipu Jayanti, but are silent on Purnaiah who had served as a Diwan during Tipu Sultan’s rule.
“When Tipu Jayanti was held under my rule, the BJP called me anti-Hindu, but who was the deewan during Tipu Sultan’s rule? To which caste did he belong to? … If a jayanti is held in one’s name who had fought against the British, the BJP gets angry. But they aren’t on Diwan Purnaiah. Can you see the double standards of the BJP?” he said addressing the 75th anniversary celebration of Quit India Movement.
Diwan Purnaiah was a towering administrator and reformer in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and had served under three kings – Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan and Mysore kings.
Purnaiah was against the displacement of the ruling Tipu Sultan family and championed that Fateh Hyder was the successor of Tipu Sultan and did not favour the Wadiyar kings.
Siddaramaiah also said the upper caste Hindus had served as administrators in the Mughal courts for 600 years.
BJP rule is like The British.
He also equated the BJP’s rule to the British, saying that it needs to be uprooted and save the country from social and economic destruction.
“The British plundered the country through the East India Company and made India a poor country. The Congress is of the view that we have to fight collectively against the BJP rule which is like the British that had destroyed the country. The BJP rule needs to be uprooted,” he said.
BJP’s rule is responsible for the country becoming poor again and therefore, it is necessary to fight against it to preserve the country, constitution and the democratic system, Siddaramaiah said.
“It is a good development that all the opposition parties of the country are coming together to fight the BJP. If we all work together we can definitely get rid of it,” he added.
Spelling out the reasons for equating BJP’s rule with the British rule, Siddaramaiah said the social and economic status of the country has not changed as Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised.
“In 2014, Modi had appealed to the people to empower the BJP and the party would change the social and economic image of the country in sixty months. Yes, the economic and social image of the country has changed today, but it is contrary to what he had said,” he said.
Instead of lifting up the people from the poverty line, as much as 23 percent of people have gone below poverty line in the last seven years, Siddarmaiah said adding as many as 12 crore people have no jobs and the country’s GDP has sunk to minus 7.7 per cent.
“The condition of people’s lives in the country are unimaginable. People’s cost of living has doubled since the BJP came to power. There is no other Prime Minister who has lied as much as Modi in independent India,” he said.
Siddaramaiah also alleged that the BJP do not believe in Baba Saheb Ambedkar’s principles of social justice, but believe in the principles of superiority, inferiority, and discrimination.
UNI
