The success of India’s Presidency of G20 which culminated at the New Delhi Summit on 9-10 September has not gone down well with Congress scion Rahul Gandhi. Among the many controversies that he courted during his address to the Sciences PO University in Paris on 8th September was his statement threatening opponents.
Sharing the stage with Hindu-hating author and columnist Christophe Jaffrelot, Rahul Gandhi was on a tirade against the BJP in Paris at a time when India was gearing up to host G20 heads of state under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership.
धमकी दे रहा है पप्पू । पर सच यह है कि जिहादी और कांग्रेसी टाईम वेस्ट नहीं करते । He will do it if he comes to power pic.twitter.com/Zbb2iJwBCd
— iMac_too (@iMac_too) September 10, 2023
But in the course of this rant against the BJP, Rahul Gandhi ended up targeting a section of Indians too, saying, “Frankly, we will have to make examples out of people. We will have to make sure that some of the people who have done what they have done pay a significant price for what they’ve done.”
Rahul Gandhi’s statement was in response to a question by a student. “Is there a defined secularism or a future of defined secularism in the country? If the party (Congress) comes to power in the next elections, how do you specifically counter the hate and the chest-thumping that has happened in the past few years regarding religion and education?” the student asked.
While the question appeared to have predetermined connotations, Rahul Gandhi’s response exposed his aversion not only to India and Indians, Hindus and Hinduism but to anything and anyone who dissents from the Nehru-Gandhi Congress. Here is the full excerpt of his answer:
“If the Prime Minister tomorrow morning was to decide there would be no chest thumping and no violence in India, it would stop. It is the direction that the leadership of a country gives, the imagination that the leadership of a country gives that shapes people. The feeling right now is that you can do whatever you want and nothing is going to happen to you. Right? The moment the feeling becomes that there are going to be consequences to attacking someone, consequences to beating up someone, that behavior will change instantly. I guarantee you. Right? That doesn’t resolve the earlier question about institutions which is this sort of disease that has now entered the Indian institutional framework where the neutrality of those institutions has gone out the window. And I think there frankly we will have to make examples of people. We’ll have to make sure that some of the people who have done what they have done pay a significant price for it. So that anybody who is thinking about doing it again understands that they will also pay the price for attacking the soul of India. Because that is how I see it, this is an attack on the soul of India and the people doing this should pay a price for it.”
Dictatorial tones reflect starkly in the Congress scion’s answer. But that is no wonder for his legacy is dictatorial to a great extent. The two images that immediately come to mind are Rajiv Gandhi and the 1984 riots, and Indira Gandhi and the Emergency. The former is Rahul Gandhi’s father, and the latter is his grandmother.
Hence, this threat of political persecution of anything and anyone Rahul Gandhi and the Nehru-Gandhi Congress do not approve of wouldn’t be the first. Safe to say that Congress already has that to its credit. And yet there reflects a fundamental flaw and sheer illiteracy about the people of India in the venom that Rahul Gandhi has spewed.
In saying that ‘It is the direction that the leadership of a country gives, the imagination that the leadership of a country gives that shapes people’, the Congress MP has proven that he has no understanding whatsoever of Indians and hence knows only to threaten the use of force.
The UPA was given the boot by the people of India in 2014. While, by Rahul Gandhi’s logic, it can be argued that this was owing to the direction given by the leadership which was the Congress at the time. However, it was the people who had decided that they did not want the corruption-laden direction the UPA was taking.
It seems to have been lost upon Rahul Gandhi that in a democracy, an ideal democracy, a leader emerges from amongst the people and that such a leader realizes the aspirations of its people having lived amongst them. Hence such a leader’s vision and “imagination” are in line with their people. The Modi government is a testament to this.
But clearly, such an understanding is doomed to be lost on a dynast like Rahul Gandhi for his inheritance proves where his hatred for the political dissent comes from.
Meanwhile, this controversial statement is only one among many. On 8th September, Rahul Gandhi while addressing students and academicians at the Sciences PO University in Paris, said that he had “read many Hindu books and there is nothing Hindu about what the BJP does”. He went on to desperately dissociate the BJP from Hindus and Hinduism even when its voter base is mainly Hindu; a fact known far and wide.
Gandhi had also met anti-India politican Fabio Massimo Castaldo in Brussels, an Italian leftist, known for his association with ISI stooge Pervaiz Iqbal Losar. After this meeting, Rahul Gandhi was quick to sing the “minorities under attack” tune on foreign soil.
How clamping down on free speech is a hallmark of Congress
It is worth noting that Congress has long threatened journalists and dissenters with serious consequences for not falling in line with the party’s stance. In May 2021, Congress leader Udit Raj had managed to stop a journalist from publishing his interview after threatening to imprison the journalist under SC/ST Act. The interview apparently had some difficult questions for the Congress leader.
In December 2022, Congress leader Jitendra Awhad threatened journalist Aman Chopra with legal action for showing video of Rahul Gandhi patting his back.
Earlier this year, the Gandhi scion Rahul Gandhi himself lambasted journalist Ravi Sisodia of CNN-News18 and called him a BJP stooge when he questioned him about his conviction in the ‘Modi surname’ case, adding that BJP has alleged that the remark was nothing short of an insult to the OBC and the socially oppressed classes of the country.
