Anand Sharma blasts Congress on caste census
New Delhi, March 21
Crossing sword with the party’s top leadership, senior Congress leader and former MP Anand Sharma has written to party president Mallikarjun Kharge opposing the demand of caste census advocated by former party president Rahul Gandhi.
Sharma wrote that demanding caste census amounts to disagreeing with views expressed by Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.
“It is pertinent to recall Indira Gandhi’s clarion call of 1980 : ‘Na jaat par, na haat par, Mohar lagegi haat par’,” Sharma wrote. After the Mandal riots of 1990, Rajiv Gandhi, as Leader of Opposition, told in a “historic speech” in the Lok Sabha on September 6, “We have problems if caste is defined to enshrine casteism in our country … the Congress cannot stand by and watch the country being divided (on caste lines)”, Sharma wrote.
Sharma’s letter comes at a time when Rahul Gandhi has intensified his campaign for a nationwide caste census and promised to carry out the exercise if elected to power in the Lok Sabha elections.
Sharma, who was an aspirant for a Rajya Sabha seat from Himachal Pradesh, wrote Congress has never engaged in nor has it endorsed identity politics. The departure from the historic position of the party is a matter of concern for many, he wrote.
