The General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Sitaram Yechury, has called for a broad alliance of Left, secular and democratic forces to unseat the BJP.
He said the 'Hindu Rashtra' ideology of the BJP is the biggest challenge faced by the country, and the saffron party is trying to replace the secular and democratic traditions of the country with this ideology.
The CPI-M leader was delivering the inaugural address at the 23rd party conference at Madurai on Wednesday.
Yechuri said that even after the protests over the Citizenship Amendment Act, farm laws, and the popular discontent against the Union government on the rising fuel prices and economic policies, the BJP is having an edge in the elections in the country.
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The CPI-M leader said that the BJP is 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 back-burner.
He also accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of promoting the movie 'The Kashmir Files', which he said speaks only about the killings of Kashmiri Pandits by the militants in the 1990s.
He said the movie doesn't talk about the murder of 1,635 people of other faiths, including Muslims, by the militants in Kashmir during the same period.
Yechury also came slammed Vice President M. Venkiah Naidu for supporting the promotion of Bhagavad Gita in educational institutions, asking why the government is not promoting texts of other religions.
He said that India is a secular country and that Gita only justifies caste hierarchy and caste atrocities in the society.
The CPI-M leader cited the examples of Gita justifying subjugating women, and added that Sudras were depicted as manual scavengers in the text.
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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, adding that countries like Chile, Honduras and Peru had strongly resisted the imperial hegemony of the United States.
Secretary of Tamil Nadu CPI-M, K. Balakrishnan, and other senior leaders were present in the meeting.
