The Congress party does not appear to believe it can win over the trust of the Indian electorate on its own. Thus, it appears that they are openly inviting Twitter, a foreign-based social media platform, to undermine Indian national sovereignty in its bid to return to power.
Senior Congress leader Randeep Surjewala wrote to Twitter to take action against Union Ministers for their comments on the Congress toolkit. It was an open invitation for Twitter to meddle in the internal affairs of India. Now, we have the Chhattisgarh Congress chief actively cheering for foreign interference.
Mohan Markam, the Chhattisgarh Congress chief, said, “If Donald Trump’s account can be suspended, then who is Raman Singh in front of him! Raman Singh is passing statements in haste because he’s wrong. Twitter is doing its work. Chhattisgarh police is taking necessary action in the case.”
If Donald Trump’s account can be suspended, then who is Raman Singh in front of him! Raman Singh is passing statements in haste because he's wrong. Twitter is doing its work. Chhattisgarh police is taking necessary action in the case: Mohan Markam, Chhattisgarh Congress chief pic.twitter.com/lDJRhC1mby
— ANI (@ANI) May 25, 2021
The comments are quite shocking. Leaders around the world, including Emmanuel Macron of France, Angela Merkel of Germany and others as well slammed social media platforms for banning Trump since they saw clearly the threat to Democracy it posed.
Such leaders recognize that if Big Tech is awarded the power to censor speech arbitrarily, then the power would very well be abused by such companies to interfere with the democratic processes in their countries. But the Congress party, clearly, is too drunk in its quest to win back power.
How far is Congress willing to go?
The question here is how far is Congress willing to go to topple the NDA Government at the center. The party has incited and endorsed all sorts of mob protests since 2019. The protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act that culminated with the riots in Delhi, the ‘farmer protests’ that spread the UK strain of the novel Coronavirus, all such antics have the explicit endorsement of the Congress party.
But even so, cheering for a foreign-based company to interfere with Indian politics is a step extreme even by the party’s own standards. But it can be safely said now that Congress will be more than willing to burn down the country if they only could rule over the ashes.
The real sinister aspect of this is that Rahul Gandhi had only recently sought help from the Joe Biden administration in the United States to aid his effort in toppling the Indian Government. He had said last month, “I don’t hear anything from the US establishment about what is happening in India. If you are saying partnership in democracy is, I mean, what’s your view on what is happening here?”
The interviewer Nicholas Burns was visibly shocked by the implication of the comment, which was clearly an invitation to the Biden administration to interfere in Indian politics. Twitter is known to work with the US political establishment. The censorship of Donald Trump and Republicans in the United States is clearly an indication towards that.
If there was any doubt about it, there did not remain room for any after social media platforms blocked media reports ahead of the US Elections in 2020 that could have hurt Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
Not just Twitter, Congress has a history of inviting foreign interference
The Congress party’s history with permitting foreign organisations and governments to interfere with Indian politics and policies runs far back and is certainly not a new phenomenon. Sonia Gandhi’s extra-constitutional NAC, which effectively undermined the authority of the Prime Minister of India, was stacked with activists whose NGOs received funding from abroad, often from foreign governments.
The NAC even drafted the blatantly sectarian Communal Violence Bill that would have painted a target on the back of every Hindu. In addition to this, the Congress party also had a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Chinese Community Party, the terms of which are still as yet unknown.
The Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, which counted then PM Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi among its top functionaries, received donations from several foreign governments and the Clinton Foundation, Ford Foundation and others. The donors were surely not contributing such huge sums out of the goodness of the heart. The logical conclusion is they received something in return. What was it?
It makes sense to aid the Congress party’s efforts to topple the NDA Government. It will be much easier to tilt Indian policies in their favour. But for those of us who call India our motherland and our home, the return of Congress to power would mean a return to colonial rule by foreign entities.
