New Delhi: Prime minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday stirred a hornet’s nest by claiming in an interview that the world did not know Mahatma Gandhi before Richard Attenborough’s movie on him. Hitting back, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that only the PM needed to see a movie to know about Gandhi.
Speaking to ABP News, PM Modi said that the Congress did not do much to popularise Gandhi, and the world knew of him only after the 1982 film was released.
“Mahatma Gandhi was a great soul in the world. In these 75 years, was it not our responsibility to inform the world about Mahatma Gandhi? No one knew about him. Forgive me, but the first time there was curiosity about him in the world was when the film Gandhi was made. We did not do it,” Modi said.
Modi: Koi nahi janta tha Mahatma Gandhi ko. Pehli baar jab Gandhi film bani, tab duniya mein curiosity hui. pic.twitter.com/ekF9MfDA6r
— Yusuf Unjhawala 🇮🇳 (@YusufDFI) May 29, 2024
Rahul Gandhi, responding to him in a post on X, said: “Only a student of ‘Entire Political Science’ would need to watch the film to know about Mahatma Gandhi.”
सिर्फ ‘एंटायर पॉलिटिकल साइंस’ के छात्र को ही महात्मा गांधी के बारे में जानने के लिये फिल्म देखने की ज़रूरत रही होगी।
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) May 29, 2024
Modi also claimed that the world knew Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela before Gandhi.
“If the world knew Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi was no less than them and you have to accept that. I am saying this after travelling the world.” The Martin Luther King Junior Memorial in Atlanta has portraits of Gandhi.
Congress general secretary in-charge of communications Jairam Ramesh reacting to Modi's remark said that PM Modi has destroyed the legacy of Gandhi during his tenure.
“If anyone has destroyed the legacy of the Mahatma, it is the outgoing Prime Minister himself. His own government has destroyed Gandhian institutions in Varanasi, Delhi and Ahmedabad. This is the identity of RSS workers that they do not know the nationalism of Mahatma Gandhi. Nathuram Godse killed Gandhiji because of the environment created by their ideology,” Ramesh tweeted.
Later in a video from the Gandhi state at President’s Estate, Rahul Gandhi said that those whose worldview was shaped in shakhas, do not understand Gandhi.
“They only understand Godse. Gandhiji was an inspiration for the whole world, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein — everyone took inspiration from Gandhiji. Crores of people follow Gandhi’s path in India. The fight is between satya (truth) and asatya (untruths), between ahimsa (non-violence) and hinsa (violence). Those that follow asatya and hinsa will not understand the other,” Gandhi says in the video.
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