Congress should not give up against right wing populism: Manish Tewari

New Delhi: Amid debate on Hinduism and Hindutva in the party since former External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid wrote a book, Anandpur Sahib MP Manish Tewari on Friday said that the Congress should not give up against right wing populism and stick to its core ideology.

Earlier, he had said that the party should not get involved in 'Hindutva' debate which is miles away from the principal ideology of the Congress.

In a series of tweets, Tewari said, "Congress may be on the wrong side of the cultural wars as are most liberal and progressive parties around the world because of the rise of right wing populism. That does not mean we should give up our core convictions. RSS-Jana Sangh- BJP were on the wrong side of Cultural wars at end of 2nd World War for close to seven decades".

"However they did not give up their core ideals. I urge my fellow Congress persons to read or re-read Discovery of India & Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru for he drew/delineated ideological fault lines clearly," he added.

The Congress leader said that Gandhian Humanism & Nehruvian Pluralism were two distinct strands that ran through ideological ethos of pre-Independence Congress and after Gandhi's assassination in January 1948, Nehru rightly consolidated his line of strict separation of church and state.

"It allowed India to heal in the wake of a blood stained partition on religious lines while Pakistan went to the dogs. In a multi religious, multi ethnic nation allowing any religion to be at centre stage of politics for an interminably long period of time notwithstanding current majoritarianism will exacerbate civilisational grievances that stretch back into millennia. It represents anti-thesis of modern Constitutional nation state ideal that Nehru-Ambedkar- Maulana Azad and millions of other patriots sacrificed their entire lives for".

On Wednesday, Tewari had said, "Congress philosophically should not indulge in this debate which is miles away from its core ideology."

He emphasised that the party should stick to its core ideology and should not deviate from it as the party leaders in the past tried to toe a 'soft-Hindutva' line to counter the BJP.

"Those people who believe in 'Liberalism and Secularism' should be in the party, otherwise if you want religion to be part of politics then you should be in the right wing parties not Congress, which believes in secularism," he said.