New Delhi: Many in the Congress are unhappy with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhgam’s (DMK) stand on Sanatana Dharma, ex-Congress MP Jyoti Mirdha, who joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Monday, has said. She also added that Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has been draining the Congress of its “life blood”.
In her interview with ThePrint, Mirdha, who’s from the politically influential Mirdha family of Rajasthan, spoke about the controversy surrounding DMK scion Udhayanidhi Stalin’s remarks on Sanatana Dharma earlier this month.
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the term Sanatana Dharma denotes the ‘eternal’ or absolute set of duties or religiously ordained practices incumbent upon all Hindus, regardless of class, caste, or sect.
“Recently, (a) Congress ally gave a statement on Sanatana Dharma but (there’s been) no pushback from the Congress on it. Dharma is to hold and Sanatana is eternal so whatever holds this nation eternally if that is the thing you want to destroy. And you are not even responding,” Mirdha, the grand-daughter of prominent Jat leader Nathuram Mirdha, a six-time Congress MP who has served as a Union minister.
Even within the Congress, there are some leaders who are unhappy with Udhayanidhi’s statement, she said. “Many in the Congress had also hailed the doing away of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir.”
The interview of Mirdha, a former MP from Nagaur, comes less than a week after she joined the BJP claiming that she felt “suffocated” in the Congress. The Jat-dominated Nagaur is the family bastion, and with Mirdha, the BJP seemingly hopes to counter former ally and current Nagaur MP Hanuman Prasad Beniwal.
It was the BJP that approached her, she told ThePrint.
“The state leadership was in touch with me. Amit Shah ji had called me and the first meeting took place with Nadda ji,” she said. “They told me that they could sense a certain potential in me and that they wanted me to join the BJP as the Congress had been keeping me on the sidelines. So, I decided to join the BJP.”
In her interview, Mirdha hit out at the Congress party for not paying heed to concerns raised by senior state leaders like Sachin Pilot, Divya Maderna and Harish Chaudhary. The central leadership should have stepped in but didn’t, she said.
“The kind of exodus that is ongoing in the Congress, I wouldn’t be surprised if the BJP sweeps the Rajasthan polls and comes to power with a brute majority.”
The election in Rajasthan is scheduled to be held in November-December.
She also slammed Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, who “knew how to deflect issues”.
“Issues that I’m raising were raised by Sachin Pilot, too. There is something wrong within the Congress,” she said. “Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot ji (and) the current dispensation has been draining the Congress of life-blood and feeding the RLP (Beniwal’s Rashtriya Loktantrik Party) in Nagaur. So many leaders have complained including me, but there is no complaint redressal system in place.”
There were also “gaps” in coordination between the central and state Congress leaderships, she claimed. “There is no feedback mechanism. There are so many leaders who are quite vocal now and still their concerns are not being addressed.”
‘Congress needs to introspect’
Mirdha is eyeing the Nagaur parliamentary seat from where she had contested in 2019 but lost to Beniwal, another Jat leader and then an NDA ally. Through Mirdha, the BJP hopes to consolidate Jat votes.
“I’ve got many calls telling me that you took the right decision at the right time. I think we are late — such is the sentiment — many more from the Congress will quit because they are upset with the party,” she told ThePrint.
The BJP leader also said she was “willing to do any duty” assigned to her. “If the party asks me to contest assembly elections, I will. If they think it’s better for the party that I contest from Nagaur then I will do that,” she said.
The Congress, she said, needs to introspect why so many leaders are quitting the party. “The situation had become stifling for me in the Congress. When you are not able to work for your people in the constituency, you try to look for avenues. In fact, there was a phase where I was disillusioned and wanted to quit politics.”
Countering those who have questioned her switch to the BJP, Mirdha said: “Some people tell me that how come your ideology has changed overnight. Ideologies aren’t rigid, but open. I am open to suggestions. My ideology is wide enough to incorporate other people’s thoughts and thinking.”
Expressing confidence that the BJP will come to power in the state with a “thumping majority”, she said what people in the country want is “nationalism and nation-building”.
“Elections will come and go…a narrative is set. The narrative that is there in the country as well as in Rajasthan, is that of nationalism. If, for nation-building, we can bring people together, whether Jat or any community, that’s what we want to achieve.”
In an interview with The Hindu after joining the BJP, Beniwal had alleged that she had switched sides because a finance company owned by her in-laws was “on the radar” of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
But Mirdha dismissed these allegations. “There have been no complaints or raids against me or my in-laws, but an issue is being created because they can’t find anything against me,” Mirdha told ThePrint.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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