Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Tuesday the Congress had declined to attend the consecration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya on January 22, because the BJP had turned it into a political event centred around Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Speaking in Nagaland’s Chiephobozou town on the third day of the Congress Bharat Jodo Nyaya Yatra, he also downplayed fissures in the oppositions INDIA alliance and said that seat sharing discussions between partners in the political bloc were progressing well.

Gandhi said that the “pran-pratishtha ceremony” that the Congress top brass has declined to attend was a “RSS-BJP function.” “I think that is why the Congress president(Mallikarjun Kharge) said he would not go to the function. We (Congress) are open to all religions, all practices…. It is difficult for us to go to a political function which is designed around the Prime Minister of India and designed around the RSS,” Gandhi said.

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Gandhi said that anyone who wanted to go to the function, even from within the Congress, was free to do so. “But we cannot be a party to a political function, it becomes very difficult for us when the PM of India and the RSS are principal opponents and have captured a function and turned it into an election function,” he said.

The Wayanad member of parliament said that only those who don’t truly believe in religion, “need to wear it on their shirt.” “My thinking is that the one who really believes in religion keeps a personal relationship with religion. That person uses religion as a way of life…I try to live by the principles of the religion. So I behave well with people, I respect people and if someone says something to me then I don’t respond with arrogance, I listen to that person. I don’t spread hate, this is the Hindu dharma for me and I follow that in my life,” Gandhi said.

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The former Congress president also said that he was confident that the opposition alliance would defeat the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls, and that any small issues between the partners will be resolved.

The BJP however attacked the Congress and the Gandhis and said that they were communal because they were “anti-Hindu.” Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said, “If Congress had attended (Ram Mandir inauguration), we would not have got any political benefit. We asked you to be present so that it becomes an apolitical event, but you and your close associates have boycotted it. Thereby you have made it a political event, which it was not,” Sarma said.

On the third day of the Congress yatra, which will traverse 100 Lok Sabha constituencies across 15 states and culminate in Mumbai on March 21, Gandhi visited the Kohima War Cemetery, and addressed two brief public gatherings in Kohima. In his speeches, he said that Prime Minister Modi had left unfulfilled commitments made when the Centre signed a framework agreement with the NSCN(IM) in 2015 for a resolution of the decades long Naga political issue. “I’ve been speaking to Naga leaders, and they are perplexed as to why no progress has been made. We’re not even clear about what the Prime Minister envisions in terms of a solution. Clearly, there is a problem that will require conversation, listening to each other, and working on implementing a solution, and that is lacking as far as the Prime Minister is concerned… The Prime Minister promises things without thinking them through,” Gandhi said.

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Under PM Modi’s BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, the Centre had signed the Framework Agreement with NSCN-IM and an “agreed position” in 2017 with a conglomeration of several Naga national political groups (NNPGs). Since then however, talks have been at a broad stand-still despite intermittent discussions, with the NSCN(IM) continuing to insist on a separate Naga flag and constitution.

(With inputs from Utpal Parashar)