United Against Hate, an activist collective based in Delhi in continuation of its series of Public Meetings on ‘Khauf se Azaadi’ (Freedom from fear) held a public gathering in Okhla on Friday, addressed by political activists , students leaders and artists. Attended by thousands of locals, UAH yet again resolved to spread the message of solidarity, of justice and of peace against the venom of fear, terror, lynching and hatred being spread by the hindutva nationalists.
All speakers stressed upon the fact that the ruling party today has lost all credibility on every real issue that affects the people of India. And hence, to hide their failures in terms of GST, demonetization, corruption, price hike, corporate loot, unemployment, and so in, the RSS/BJP are desperately falling back on their venomous core-politics of hate, terror and fear to divide the society.
Nadeem Khan, one of the main organizers of the United Against Hate said that while hate and saffron terror is at its height, it is also important that we question the so called secular forces.
“Why is it that they are not speaking up openly against the hate crimes? Why is it that Rahul Gandhi can’t visit the victim’s families? Why is it that Akhilesh can’t speak up?” He asked. Nadeem Khan said while we must defeat BJP, we should also make the “secular” parties more accountable, we must tell them that they cant treat us like vote bank, that they can’t take us for granted.
Kanhaiya Kumar said that after the last four years it is clear that the RSS actually stands for Reliance Seva Sangh.
“At a time when the most number of farmers have committed suicide, far from farmers’ loan waiver, the present government has waived a whooping 3 lakh 16 thousand crore rupees corporate debt out of which 45 thousand crore was of the Reliance family.” the student leader said in his speech. Kanhaiya said that to hide these real issues, they will rely on their rotten politics of communal hate and we must remain vigilant against it.
Umar Khalid said that with the wave of lynchings, violence and hindutva terror under the BJP conditions are such that Muslims today feel grateful if Muslims are simply allowed to live, and not killed off.
“They are turning us into second class citizens wherein we forget to demand our basic constitutional rights as citizens, our education, road, health, etc. So we are left in ghettos like this with no basic civic amenities.” Umar said.
