Why is govt celebrating Nov 26, asks Sitaram Yechury

NEW DELHI: CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Friday tore into the government’s decision to celebrate Constitution Foundation Day on November 26, calling it an attempt by the ruling establishment “to worm their way into the national movement in which they had no role to play”.
“Victors change history but now victors are changing past history,” Yechury said participating in the two-day discussion in the face of interruptions by BJP’s Tarun Vijay and V P Singh Badnor while the opposition benches lauded him.
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The CPM general secretary questioned the need to reaffirm faith in the Constitution. “What is this drama? We are here because we affirm this Constitution,” he said, asking the treasury benches to spell out what law governed India from November 26, 1949, the day draft Constitution was adopted, to January 26, 1950 when India became a republic. He said the country was ruled by the Indian Independence Act moved by the British Parliament. “On November 26,1949, the draft Constitution was not our law. Can someone from the government explain to me what is being celebrated? A senior BJP leader said PM is a good event manager. What is this, from one event to another? From tomorrow, it will be Paris. The ‘garima’ (dignity) of Parliament is being undermined,” he said.
Emphasizing that the RSS had no role to play in the national movement, Yechury cited a Bombay Home Department communiqué of 1942 which had said that ‘Sangh people were behaving themselves’. He also tried to set at rest the allegation that communists did not participate in the ‘Quit India’ movement by citing a communication of the colonial government that said ‘factories were closed all over India and communists were revolutionaries’.
Referring to leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley’s reference to the ‘Third Reich’ and authoritarianism, Yechury cited extensively from MS Golwalkar’s ‘We or Our Nationhood Defined’ to say that all that the RSS leader aspired for was a Hindu nation for which he drew inspiration from Hitler’s ‘Third Reich’. “Golwalkar had written that to keep up the purity of the race. Germany purged the semitic races. Golwalkar had said, ‘A good lesson for us Hindus to learn and profit by’,” Yechury said. He also cited Ambedkar who had said that if “creed is put above nation we will lose our independence”.
The CPM leader pointed out that without equality and fraternity, there can be no liberty. “That is precisely being compromised,” he said. Congress’ AK Antony, Pramod Tiwari and many others walked up to Yechury to congratulate him for the speech. Antony said, “This was the best speech of Yechury and among the best in the House.”