Alliance or not, CWC meets to list out poll stakes

As if making the last plea for secular alliances, the CWC statement said: ‘‘The stakes involved are crystal clear. The Congress party, therefore, is seeking to forge a solid phalanx of secular political forces to thwart the NDA’s pursuit of power for parochial and personal ends.’’

The party has already gone in for a renewed version of secularism in its manifesto. For the first time, the manifesto would be speaking of fighting bigotry in ‘‘all religions’’ and that ‘‘secularism is not just a majority-minority issue.’’

It is also expected to put the party position on secularism as the ‘‘fight between broad-minded liberals of all religions against the bigots of that religion.’’

The Congress’ 1999 general election manifesto read: ‘‘It (secularism) is a debate between those who see Indian civilisation as what it is — a most tolerant and liberal way of life — and those who seek to distort it by their bigotry, narrow-mindedness and intolerance’’. Today’s CWC statement, gives ‘‘historical’’ reasons why the RSS should be defeated, from its tacit ‘‘support to the British’’ to alleging its hand in ‘‘silencing the Mahatma’’.

‘‘Let us face the reality that today the political apparatus of our country has been sought to be captured by a set of people who owe their allegiance only to RSS,’’ the statement says.

Taking the Congress workers back to the ‘‘poisonous’’ two-nation theory, the statement explains that the RSS had projected the country ‘‘where two distinct nationalities — Hindus and Muslims — exist, who have nothing in common and are eternally in conflict’’.

It refers repeatedly to the BJP that ‘‘could not even reach the half-way mark in Parliament’’ and the NDA coalition as an exercise in ‘‘bringing on one platform disparate political entities’’.

It also speaks of how terrorists had a ‘‘free run’’ of the country and ‘‘also dared to attack the temples of Jammu and pilgrims on the way to Amarnath and Vaishno Devi’’, the Red Fort and Parliament.