New Delhi: The government must conduct a caste-based census in the country if it cares about Hinduism, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) MP Andimuthu Raja said Monday in the Lok Sabha, replying on the Motion of Thanks to President Droupadi Murmu’s address.
“We are all Hindus, but the question is which kind,” Raja said, adding that a caste-based census was necessary to answer that question. He said while the division of labour was a universal reality, the Hindu religion had been distorted to misinterpret it as “division of labourers” in the last 2,000 years. This did not allow upward or horizontal mobility of people, the MP said.
Criticising the government’s Vishwakarma scheme — initiated in 2023 to provide support to artisans and craftspeople — Raja said it only perpetuated the caste system by ensuring a person born in a certain caste could not break away from the traditional occupation associated with it. Through the scheme, the government wants to maintain the caste system, he alleged.
Further saying that he came from the land of the Dravidian ideology started by Periyar, Raja said: “Dravidianism has rejected Modi’s fascism.” Making a jibe at the prime minister, he said the BJP failed to win a single seat in the state though Modi came to Tamil Nadu eight times before the Lok Sabha elections.
The treasury benches should learn about Dravidian ideology to understand why the people of Tamil Nadu rejected them, he added.
Responding to the BJP’s narrative of “decolonisation”, Raja criticised the prime minister for speaking of “hundreds of years of slavery”.
He said Nehru, Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Ambedkar, and even Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the founder of the Jana Sangh — the forerunner of the BJP — spoke of only “200 years of slavery, i.e. British”.
“[The] British came here for business, trade, commerce and enslaved us. That is slavery,” he said. “Whereas [the] Mughals came here, settled here, they ruled here. English people ruled from [the] viceroyalty council sitting in England.”
“Mughal emperors came, of course. Aryans also came here,” he said. “If you say Mughals are alien, then part of our society, Hindu society, Aryan, is also alien.”
“That is why Ambedkar also said if at all a person, if at all a race is entitled to claim this land, it is only Dravidian, not Aryan,” he said.
Raja thanked the people of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab for demonstrating that politically, Indians were not divided into a north-south binary, which the BJP wanted to establish.
On the question of the NEET examination leak, Raja said that Rahul Gandhi had articulated the stand of the Opposition. In his maiden address as leader of the Opposition on Monday, Gandhi said that NEET had been transformed from a “professional examination” to a “commercial” one, which ensured only the rich could qualify for it. The students of India have no faith in the examination, he said.
Reclaiming Hinduism
Buoyed by the gains made in the election, the Opposition took the lead from Rahul Gandhi, and sought to reclaim Hinduism from the BJP.
The Lok Sabha, in fact, started on a heated note with Rahul Gandhi strongly attacking the BJP for not representing Hinduism. Gandhi repeatedly invoked Lord Shiva to underscore that Hinduism represented truth, courage and non-violence — attributes the BJP actively worked against, he said.
Raja said “We want to celebrate our religion provided you should give equal opportunity to all. We are not against God if you say love is the god, fraternity is the god, humanity is the god.”
Taking a swipe at Modi, he said, “we are even ready to accept Modi as a godman provided you should be having such a qualification. Problem is you are having no such qualification. We cannot believe it.”
Trinamool Congress leader Mahua Moitra, who spoke for the first time in Parliament after she was expelled from the previous Lok Sabha over cash-for-query allegations last year, also invoked Lord Krishna and Lord Ram in her speech.
“Much like Lord Krishna protected Draupadi, the people of Krishnanagar have protected me,” the Krishnanagar MP said.
Speaking of the BJP’s defeat in Ayodhya despite the inauguration of the Ram Temple in January this year, Moitra said, Lord Ram has responded to BJP’s politics by saying “not in my name”.
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She also fiercely attacked the government by saying it was in denial about the “new reality” of India, which had diminished Modi’s rajtantra with the power of loktantra.
In the three states of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal, which represent one-third of the country in terms of Lok Sabha seats (170 seats in all), the BJP could only win 54, she added.
Emphasising the “precarious” nature of the new government, Moitra said the NDA now stood for the “Nitish-Naidu Dependent Alliance”.
Attacking the Election Commission of India (ECI) for its alleged lack of neutrality, Moitra said the Opposition managed to make gains across the country despite it. The “eager and compliant” ECI, she alleged, turned a complete blind eye towards the prime minister and the BJP’s “egregious violation” of the Model Code of Conduct when they viciously attacked minorities in the course of the election.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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