Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said on Wednesday that Mahatma Gandhi, had he been alive today, would have begun a march from Delhi to Srinagar, to protest the scrapping of special status to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, PTI reported.

“If Mahatma Gandhi would have been alive on the day Article 370 was voided, he would have announced a yatra from Red Fort in Delhi to Lal Chowk in Srinagar,” Singh said.

On August 5, the Centre had revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and imposed a curfew in the state. It had also placed most major political leaders in the state under detention. While restrictions in Kashmir have slowly eased, the state is yet to return to normalcy.

Singh, speaking at a function in Indore to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, also claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah have “finished” former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s doctrine on resolving the Jammu and Kashmir problem on the principles of “Kashmiriyat”, “Jahmooriyat” and “Insaaniyat”.

Singh also said that radicalisation of Hindus is as dangerous as radicalisation of Muslims.

‘Gandhi’s India under severe attack’: Yechury

Meanwhile, Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said on Wednesday that even as Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary is being celebrated across the country, the India that the Constitution and the Father of the Nation had envisioned is “under attack”.

“Today, as we inaugurate #SurjeetBhawan, it is Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary,” Yechury tweeted. “Gandhi’s India and our Constitution is under severe attack. In the serious rightward shift in India, it is only the Left which can provide answers. We will meet the challenge.”

Yechury inaugurated the Harkishan Singh Surjeet Bhawan in Delhi, named after the former general secretary of the CPI (M). “’London-tod Singh’ is the name teenaged Comrade Surjeet gave to the British police as they came to arrest him for hoisting our tricolour,” Yechury said. “He managed to do it, before being detained. His life, his resolve as a Freedom-fighter and Communist has vital lessons for us.”

Yechury said that Gandhi’s India – which is secular, democratic and economically self-reliant – needs to be safeguarded and strengthened.

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