New Delhi: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi yesterday spoke out forcefully for empowering Dalits, saying the community needed the “escape velocity of Jupiter” to achieve success and attacked BSP leader Mayawati, saying she was not allowing other Dalit leaders to rise.
Addressing two back-to-back functions in the capital on the empowerment of Dalits, Rahul Gandhi also hit out at the opposition, saying they would lose the 2014 Lok Sabha elections as they had ignored the Dalits, never bothered to go to their homes or “hold their hands and understand their problems”.
Reaching out to the Dalits with the assembly elections and the general elections in mind, Gandhi also urged for more representation for the community in the party.
Turning to astronomy, Rahul Gandhi said the Dalit community needs the “escape velocity of Jupiter” to achieve success.
He also explained to the audience the phenomenon of escape velocity — the speed that an object needs to be travelling at to break free of a planet or moon’s gravity.
Addressing a function at Vigyan Bhavan on National Awareness Camp for Scheduled Castes Empowerment, Rahul Gandhi said B R Ambedkar was the first Dalit to attain escape velocity and after him Kanshi Ram channelised “the energy that was created due to reservation” and helped many Dalits attain escape velocity.
But he said Mayawati, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister, had captured the Dalit leadership and was not allowing others to rise.
He said the escape velocity needed to escape from Jupiter’s atmosphere is much more than that of the Earth.
“The escape velocity for earth is 11.2 km/sec while that of Jupiter is 60 km/sec. In India we have the concept of caste. There is an escape velocity here also. For a Dalit to achieve success the escape velocity required is that of Jupiter. More effort is needed,” he stressed.
IANS
