Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948. The RSS vehemently denied that its ideology and propaganda motivated the assassin. The RSS claimed that the ban imposed on the organization by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was unjust. Let’s, for a moment, take the RSS at its word, and pose the following question to the RSS and its progeny, the BJP: Why did you erase the name of Mahatma Gandhi from the one — and only — socio-economic programme named after him?

The programme named after Mahatma Gandhi is the Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) supported by an Act of Parliament. The government has passed Bill No. 197 of 2025 in Parliament to repeal the Act and the Scheme. Section 37(1) of the Bill reads:

“Save as provided in section 10, on and from such date as the Central Government may by notification appoint in this behalf …….the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, with all rules, notifications, Schemes, orders and guidelines made thereunder shall stand repealed.”

The Bill goes further: it obliges, under section 8(1), every state government to make a Scheme for providing a guarantee of 125 days of wage employment in a financial year to every household in the rural areas; the Scheme........

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