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Deal strictly with communal
elements, Sonia tells her CMs

G Vinayak in Guwahati

Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Friday launched a scathing attack on the Sangh Parivar, holding it responsible for the communal violence in Gujarat.

Speaking at the conclave of 14 Congress chief ministers in Assam's capital Guwahati, Sonia spent first 10 minutes of her 40-minute speech stressing on the need to preserve India's secular character.

"We are meeting against the background of one of the darkest periods in our post-independence history," she said. "What has happened in Gujarat starting with Godhra has shaken this image of ours as a land in which people of different faiths live harmoniously with each other. Who else but those deriving inspiration from the killers of the Mahtma could have defiled the sanctity of the Sabarmati Ashram," she asked

She pointed out to the Congress chief ministers that an "overwhelming number of Indians want to move forward, look ahead. A handful of Indians want us to be prisoners of a past invented and interpreted by them," Sonia said without once naming the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or the Bharatiya Janata Party.

"This is the real battleground of secularism. It is to protect India's great religions from the zealots of obscurantism, from the merchants of fundamentalism, from the purveyors of hate and poison. It is this vision that Congress has always stood for and practiced. It is this vision of secularism that is in danger," she said.

"Any individual or any organisation preaching or practicing the politics of hate and threatening the very existence of our secular fabric must be dealt with without fear or favour according to the law. This is my directive - there must not be any compromise, under any circumstances on this under a Congress government."

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