In a unique gesture, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi will accept one of the largest national flags of the country, prepared by dalit students at a technical institute in Sanand near Ahmedabad on November 24.
The institute is run by the Dalit Shakti Kendra of the Navsarjan Trust.
The flag was originally prepared as part of the 'Untouchability Free India Movement' mission launched by them. Four months ago, the flag was taken in form of a rally to Gandhinagar and was supposed to be given to Chief Minister Vijay Rupani along with a memorandum. The organisation wanted that on August 15, during his speech, the chief minister should declare one village of Gujarat free from the practice of untouchability.
Martin Mackwan of Navsarjan Trust told THE WEEK that a representative of the chief minister refused to take the flag saying that they had no place to keep it. They said they would accept the flag once they had space for it.
According to Mackwan, the flag is 125x8.3 feet and is made out of hand woven khadi. It was stitched and painted by our students, he added.
He said that after the news got viral that the flag was not accepted by the chief minister, the Congress approached them with a proposal whether they would be interested to give the flag to the party. “We told them that we would surely give the flag to them if they reached out to us and discussed the subject of untouchability,” Mackwan said.
The function on November 24 is expected to last for about an hour.
Questioned whether Rahul accepting the flag would mean that the dalits would vote for Congress in the upcoming elections, Mackwan said, “We were not into politics and it was up to the people. Politicians say 'India free from Congress' and 'India free from BJP', but we say 'Untouchability free India',” he added.
