Explained: This article explains the political background, key decisions, and possible outcomes related to Explained : Enormous Challenges Before the Congress on its 140th Anniversary to Save India and Constitution and Its Impact and why it matters right now.
Assault on the right to work of the poor by dismantling the MNREGA has now been accompanied by the no holds barred attack on the cultural liberties of people celebrating Christmas.
On January 27, 1948, three days before his martyrdom, Mahatma Gandhi said, “Indian National Congress which is the oldest national political organisation and which has after many battles fought her non-violent way to freedom cannot be allowed to die.” “It can only,” he asserted “die with the nation”. He proceeded to add, “A living organism ever grows or it dies. The Congress has won political freedom, but it has yet to win economic freedom, social and moral freedom. These freedoms are harder than the political, if only because they are constructive, less exciting and not spectacular…. The hardest has yet to come. In its difficult ascent to democracy…”
Oath to restore MNREGA
Those utterances of Gandhi are of enormous importance in 2025 for the Congress which celebrated its foundation day on December 28, a few days after the Narendra Modi regime very callously and in a calculated manner repealed MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), the largest ever right to work legislation anywhere in the world affirming the promise to the poor across the country ensuring 100 days of work on demand by them with assurances of minimum wages.
On its 140th anniversary, the Congress and its leadership have taken an oath to agitate across the country for the restoration of MNREGA which has been replaced, without any deliberation by the Modi regime with the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB–G RAM G) Act. It ostensibly provides 125 days of work bereft of guarantee because it suspends work during peak agricultural season for six months and allows the Union Government, among others, to select areas where work would be provided. The provision of finance for it puts a heavy burden on states by reducing the share of the Union government from 90% in MGNREGA to 60% under the new law, thus severely causing financial constraints to them.
In defence of pluralism
While that historic oath was being taken to reinstate the MNREGA by mobilising the poor and involving them in an agitation to defend the right to work enshrined in Article 41 of the constitution, the social freedoms of people, especially minorities belonging to the Christian community, were being violated with impunity by BJP leaders and Hindutva outfits. Christmas celebrations, both inside churches and outside, were attacked and vandalised, and abuses were hurled at church priests and fathers, in complete disregard of the Constitution’s mandate guaranteeing the right to profess one’s faith and celebrate religious festivals.
Even non-Christians were violently targeted for selling Santa Claus statues and caps in violation of their fundamental rights to engage in trade and commercial activities of their choice. Such dastardly attacks on pluralism and fundamental rights of people to pursue their faiths were never condemned by BJP leaders including Prime Minister Modi who described Christmas as a reflection of the “timeless message of love, peace and compassion”, and attended the Christmas morning service at Cathedral Church of the Redemption in New Delhi and extended greetings to the citizens.
Assault on the right to work of the poor by dismantling the MNREGA has now been accompanied by the no-holds-barred attack on the cultural liberties of people celebrating Christmas. Such hate-filled violence and mayhem faced by Christians during Christmas is part of the pattern scripted by the BJP and Hindutva organisations to target minorities, call for their genocide and comprehensively boycott them in social and economic fields so that they live under fear and without rights and dignity they are entitled to and assured as citizens of this country.
Such infringement of the human rights of people by BJP and Hindutva organisations on the ground of their religious faiths and identities constitutes a fatal attack on our pluralism, the constitution and idea of India.
The Congress party, on its foundation day, must also stand by the minorities of India and swear to defend their rights and entitlements which they enjoy and have been fortified by the safeguards provided to them by the constitution. Rahul Gandhi during his Bharat Jodo Yatra in 2022 had unequivocally charged that the Modi regime and BJP sprinkled kerosene all over the country and one spark would cause communal conflagration causing serious crisis for people and country. Therefore, his oft repeated utterances that he set out to open ‘Mohabbat ka dukaan’ (shop of love) amid an existing ‘nafrat ka bazaar’ (market of hatred) of BJP set a positive narrative to counter the hatred forming the part of pattern to target minorities.
Gandhi’s utterances in the Belgaum session
During the Congress party’s Belgaum session in Karnataka in 2024, Rahul Gandhi had said that those thriving in India with support of the British regime only talked about a “wholly Hindu or wholly Mussalman India.” “Happily” he remarked “their number is small”. Very hearteningly no Muslim in India is now talking about a wholly “Mussalman India.”
The RSS ,which never participated in the freedom struggle and joined hands with the British regime in India is now, through its chief Mohan Bhagwat, stridently claiming that India is a Hindu Rashtra even if there is no constitutional sanction behind it. While in 1924, Gandhi was satisfied to note that very few people were speaking of a Hindu India, in 2025 those advocating a Hindu Rashtra are ideologically sustaining the Modi regime, and Hindutva entities owing allegiance to the RSS are wreaking havoc on the constitution and the idea of India rooted in secular ideals. Rahul Gandhi’s assertion that Congress is engaged in an ideological struggle against the BJP and the RSS, therefore, assumes critical significance echoing 1924 utterances of Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandhi also very sensitively observed in his Belgaum speech in 1924 that British government’s attempts to normalise quarrels among people on religious grounds was nothing but a civil war. Gandhi’s fears are being borne out in the actions of the BJP and Hindutva forces, which relentlessly stoke and normalise conflicts on religious grounds.
It is against this backdrop that Congress must respond to the grave challenge by defending pluralism and summoning people’s support to defend it. It augurs well for India that Rahul Gandhi has sustained the campaign to protect the constitution and safeguard people’s right to vote which he alleged is being stolen because the chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and his other fellow election commissioners are allegedly manipulating electoral rolls to enable the BJP to snatch poll victory unfairly. While celebrating its foundation day, the Congress must stand up to the enormous challenge to save India.
S.N. Sahu served as Officer on Special Duty to President of India K.R. Narayanan.
This article went live on December twenty-ninth, two thousand twenty five, at fifty-one minutes past eleven in the morning.
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