Rahul Gandhi attacked the Manusmriti in his address to students in Pune last month and the Congress then began demanding an FIR in the Haldwani case. 6 min readNew DelhiSep 11, 2026 07:19 PM IST First published on: Sep 11, 2026 at 07:19 PM IST
At a time when the BJP’s core constituency of the “upper castes” in the Hindi heartland is showing signs of discontent, the party is drawing a degree of comfort from the Congress’s decision to focus its attacks on the Manusmriti and shuddhikaran (purification).
The Congress has taken up the issue following the controversy over an alleged purification ritual held at a ground in Uttarakhand’s Haldwani, where its president Mallikarjun Kharge, a Dalit, had addressed a rally. This pitch of the Congress comes at a time when it was grabbing some eyeballs over issues such as paper leaks, the burden of coaching centres, and employment concerns that Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi had been raising at his “Chhatron Ki Goonj” events, issues that had been gaining traction.