Easy to usurp Gandhi's legacy, hard to walk in his footsteps: Rahul

Badanavalu (K'taka): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday paid tributes to Mahatma Gandhi on his birth anniversary and said while it is convenient for those in power to appropriate the legacy of the Father of the Nation, it is difficult to walk in his footsteps.

Rahul Gandhi, who visited a Khadi Gramodyog Kendra here that Mahatma Gandhi had visited in 1927 and 1932, said the ideology that killed the freedom fighter has delivered inequality and divisiveness in the last eight years. He also participated in a prayer meeting and interacted with women weavers at the Khadi Gramodyog Kendra.

Later, he visited Badanavalu village near Mysuru and interacted with the villagers besides doing 'Shramdaan' (voluntary work) by laying a pavement. The former Congress chief also painted the tricolour with village children.

In a statement, Rahul Gandhi said, "We remember and pay our respects to that great son of India. Our remembering is made more poignant by the fact that we are on the 25th day of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, a padyatra in which we are walking his path of ahimsa, unity, equality and justice." "Just as Gandhiji fought the British Raj, we ... (have) embarked on a battle with the very ideology that killed Gandhi. This ideology has delivered inequality, divisiveness and the erosion of our hard-won freedoms in the past eight years. "

Against this politics of himsa (violence) and 'asatya' (lies), the Bharat Jodo Yatra will spread the message of Ahimsa and 'swaraj' from Kanyakumari to Kashmir," he said, adding that 'swaraj' has different meanings. "It is the freedom of our states to exercise their constitutional freedoms and of our villages to practice Panchayati Raj," he said.