Chennai, March 30 (BPNS)

The Communist Party of India (Marxist ) general secretary, Sitaram Yechury has called for a broad alliance of left, secular, and democratic forces to unseat the BJP.

He said that the’ Hindu Rashtra’ ideology of the BJP is the biggest challenge faced by the country and the saffron party was trying to replace secular and democratic traditions of the country with this ideology.

The CPI-M leader was delivering the inaugural address of the 23 party Tamil Nadu state conference at Madurai on Wednesday.

Yechuri said that even after Citizenship Amendment Act, farmers’ struggle, and the popular discontent against the union government on the rising fuel prices and economic policies, the BJP was having an edge in the elections in the country.

The CPI-M leader said that the BJP was using hate politics and Hindutva identity to win elections by putting all the other teething issues faced by the people of the country in the background.

He also accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of promoting the movie ‘The Kashmir Files’ which spoke only about the killings of 89 Kashmiri Pandits by the militants in the 1990s. He said that the movie had kept quiet regarding the murder of 1635 people of other faiths including Muslims by the militants in Kashmir during the same period.

Yechury also came out against the Vice president of India, M. Venkiah Naidu supporting promotion of Bhagwad Gita in education and said that why the government was not promoting texts of other religions. He said that India was a secular country and that Gita was only justifying caste hierarchy and caste atrocities in the society.

The CPI-M leader cited the examples of Gita justifying subjugating women to men and added that Sudras were depicted as manual scavengers in the text.

He said that promoting such a reactionary, backward, and exploitative system should not be allowed.

The CPI-M general secretary said that in Scandinavian countries right-wing governments were thrown out by the people and replaced with left governments and added that countries like Chile, Honduras, and Peru had strongly resisted the imperial hegemony of the United States.

Yechury said that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recognized that the left forces under the CPI-M can mobilize the people against the BJP.

Tamil Nadu CPI-M state secretary, K. Balakrishnan, and other senior leaders were present in the meeting.