On Monday, April 10, Anil K Antony, the son of former defence minister of India and veteran Congress leader AK Antony, joined OpIndia’s Editor-in-Chief Nupur Sharma for an interview on Twitter Spaces. Anil Antony had recently made headlines when he decided to quit Congress and join the BJP, even though his father disapproved of the move.
In a free-wheeling chat, Antony talked in detail about his decision to quit Congress, his displeasure with the direction in which the party is going, and how the shift in the ideological stand of Congress has made it a fringe party.
Anil Antony said that he is feeling quite relieved now following his exit from the grand old party and leaving the negativity behind. Antony’s disillusionment with the Congress party began when he tweeted, following the release of the controversial BBC documentary, that despite large differences with BJP, he thought that placing views of British state-sponsored BBC, a channel with a long history of prejudices sets a dangerous precedent.
Despite large differences with BJP, I think those in 🇮🇳 placing views of BBC, a 🇬🇧 state sponsored channel with a long history of 🇮🇳 prejudices,and of Jack Straw, the brain behind the Iraq war, over 🇮🇳 institutions is setting a dangerous precedence,will undermine our sovereignty.
— Anil K Antony (@anilkantony) January 24, 2023
Following his tweet, Antony shared that he faced a lot of pressure from the Congress party, particularly from the Kerala unit to backtrack. However, Antony refused to do so believing that BBC was trying to act against Indian interests with this documentary.
Calling out the BBC’s bias against India, Antony said that he was surprised to see his party colleagues getting so excited about the channel’s documentary on PM Modi and sharing it all over the place. Following this, Anil Antony shared his reservations about the documentary, however, his reservations did not go down well within the Congress party.
Several top leaders from Kerala and even from the center called up Antony and asked him to either delete the tweet or backtrack from his stand against the BBC documentary. However, the young leader refused to give in to the unreasonable demand and was subsequently the target of a coordinated cyberbullying campaign.
Anil Antony further shared that he was already unhappy with the direction in which the Congress party was going at that time. From a centrist party, the Congress move to the far left had left him feeling uncomfortable in the party. Under these circumstances, the campaign to demonise him online and the pressure from party leaders as well to take back a fairly innocuous tweet ended up being the straw that broke the camel’s back and Antony decided to resign and he left the party the very next day.
Highlighting BBC’s history of working against Indian interests and supporting Pakistan’s stand, particularly in border areas, Anil Antony expressed his surprise that Congress was supporting BBC when it works against Indian integrity.
Responding to Rahul Gandhi’s tweet linking Anil Antony to Gautam Adani, he called the tweet childish and said that it doesn’t suit someone who is being pushed as a PM candidate for the past two decades. He also added that the manner in which Rahul Gandhi treated veteran leaders like Ghulam Nabi Azad, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Himanta Biswa Sarma, and Kiran Kumar Reddy shows that Rahul is a bad judge of character.
Antony also called out Rahul Gandhi for his immaturity and his insistence on pushing the Adani issue even when senior allies like Sharad Pawar are saying that there is no point in pursuing this issue. Antony further said that people like him are leaving Congress because they want to do something meaningful in life instead of working for just one family.
During his candid interview, Anil Antony also touched upon several other issues plaguing the Congress party including Rahul Gandhi’s fixation with Adani, blunders during the 2019 campaign, the party’s minority appeasement, curtailing the freedom of expression of Hindus and targeting of Veer Savarkar among other things.
