After Rahul’s ‘brutal India’ remark, BJP calls him ‘merchant of hate’

From a poem to counter his hug-and-wink performance in the Lok Sabha, to being called the “merchant of hate”, Congress President Rahul Gandhi was targeted by the BJP in Parliament and on social media on Monday.

The Congress chief, who has positioned himself as the purveyor of peace, and a campaigner against “Modi’s brutal New India”, kept the heat on the BJP, attacking it over a mob-lynching incident in BJP-ruled Rajasthan.

Rahul began the day with a provocative tweet, referring to the incident of a 28-year-old man being lynched by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes in Alwar district of Rajasthan last Saturday. Local police allegedly took four hours to take the victim to a hospital that was only six km from the scene of crime. According to data from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), there have been 45 deaths in the country due to mob-lynching between 2014 and March 2018.

“Policemen in Alwar took three hours to get a dying Rakbar Khan, the victim of a lynching mob, to a hospital just six kilometres away. Why? They took a tea break en route. This is Modi’s brutal “New India” where humanity is replaced with hatred and people are crushed and left to die,” said the Congress President on his Twitter.

Cabinet ministers Piyush Goyal and Smriti Irani took to Twitter almost instantly to counter Rahul.

Goyal called him a “merchant of hate” — former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s had referred to then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as a “merchant of death” during the Gujarat Assembly polls of 2007.

“Stop jumping with joy every time a crime happens Mr Rahul Gandhi. The state has already assured strict and prompt action. You divide the country in every manner possible for electoral gains and shed crocodile tears. Enough is enough. You are a Merchant of Hate(sic),” the Railways minister tweeted.

Textiles Minister Smriti Irani, who had unsuccessfully contested against the Congress chief from Amethi in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, blamed the Nehru-Gandhi family for the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 and similar riots in Bhagalpur (Bihar) and Nellie (Assam).

“Rahul Gandhi’s family presided over the worst form of hate in 1984, Bhagalpur and Nellie and many other instances. It is shameful that he is doing the same with vulture politics. Not a single instance goes by where he does not attempt to rupture social bonds for electoral gains,” Irani said.

Meanwhile, the BJP tweeted a poem on Rahul’s performance in the Lok Sabha during the debate on the no-confidence motion against the government: “ 70 saal pyaar ka naatak, band karo yeh jhoot ka fatak. Gale lagaana ankh maarna, kaise yeh kar paate ho. Jab jab desh badalna chahe, tum usko bhadkate ho. Yeh desh hai mera, film nahin hai. Tumko itna ilm nahin hai (Stop the farce of love you played for 70 years. How can you hug and wink? When the country wants a change, you want to mislead. You do not have the maturity to understand that these are matters of national interest, not a Bollywood film).”