A good 50 percent of Rahul Gandhi’s nearly 40-minute-long address in the Parliament was about Bharat Jodo Yatra and insinuating how he braved through it all. Seemingly flattered by his return as Lok Sabha MP, Rahul Gandhi began his speech by thanking Speaker Om Birla.
Rahul Gandhi began his painfully long prologue on Bharat Jodo Yatra by saying, “Today, I will not speak from my mind but from my heart”.
“I traveled from the sea shores to the snowclad mountains of Kashmir…,” the Gandhi scion said and was immediately interrupted by a taunt from the Treasury benches that he ignored Ladakh.
Rahul then said that when he was asked by many people during the yatra why is he marching and what is his aim behind walking from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, he said, “Initially, I could not answer these questions because perhaps I myself did not know why I had started this yatra.”
Now just how great is that? A nearly Rs 300 crore splurge on a 3,570-kilometre march purportedly to unite Bharat as suggested by the brand name and yet the face of the brand says he did not know why he started it. What has all the Bharat Jodo brouhaha been about then?
A few minutes into his address, RaGa had successfully drifted away from the no-confidence motion and ventured deep into his apparent philosophical awakening. “When I started the yatra, I wanted to know India and understand the people. Then I started understanding…the thing I loved, the thing for which I am ready to die, the thing for which I am ready to go to Modi ji’s jails, the thing for which I have taken abuses for 10 years, I wanted to understand that thing…what is it that has held my heart?”
From here he lapsed into the pain he endured during the yatra owing to a previous knee injury and how the yatra defeated his arrogance. “I have been running 8 to 10 km every day. So I had thought that if I can run 10 km then what is walking 25 km every day?”
“Today when I look back, there was arrogance in my heart but India erased that arrogance completely. The pain in my knee broke my arrogance. Ek tarah se, bhediya chinti ban gaya (the wolf turned into an ant). He who had left with arrogance to see India was free of arrogance after the yatra,” Rahul went on.
His tale of enlightenment was followed by too-good-to-be-true encounters which he recalled from the yatra which was probably an attempt to insist that he has a connection with the common India, a highly contested point of view in Indian politics. Another one of his many faux pas was saying that “Bharat logon ka dukh hai (India is people’s pain)” while making the point that India is a voice.
But eyebrows were raised when Rahul Gandhi said that when a farmer was talking to him and looking him in the eye, he could feel the shame the farmer must have felt while speaking to his wife. Read it again for it takes some time to digest. “I could not hear the crowd, only the person talking to me, their pain, their wounds, their sorrows all became mine.”
The Congress MP seemed to have finally arrived at his point when he raised the issue of Manipur. He said that the “BJP government has divided Manipur into two parts.” After narrating the conversation he claimed to have had with violence victims living in relief camps in Manipur, Rahul Gandhi said that the “BJP government has murdered Bharat Mata in Manipur.”
Union Minister Kiren Rijiju along with the other BJP MPs lashed out at Rahul Gandhi saying that the Congress was responsible for militancy in the Northeast. The BJP demanded an apology from Rahul Gandhi saying that the Congress had finished Northeast.
A brawl broke out in the Lok Sabha even as Rahul Gandhi continued to reiterate that the “government had murdered the voice of Bharat Mata in Manipur.” “You murdered Bharat Mata in Manipur. You murdered Bharat Mata before the people of Manipur….you are anti-nationals, you are not desh bhakts, you are not patriots, you murdered India in Manipur,” Rahul cried.
The Congress leader attacked the PM saying that “he could not go to Manipur because he murdered Bharat Mata in Manipur.” Rahul Gandhi continued to speak the objectionable words despite caution from the Speaker.
“Indian army can bring peace in Manipur in a day if you allow but you are not allowing it,” the Congress MP said even as the party has indulged in spreading fake news on Manipur amid an already sensitive situation.
Equating Prime Minister Modi to Ravan, Rahul Gandhi said, “Lanka was not burnt by Hanuman, it was burnt by Ravan’s ego. Ram did not kill Ravan, Ravan’s ego killed Ravan.” He accused the government of “throwing kerosene in the entire country and setting it on fire.”
“You did that in Manipur and now you are doing this in Haryana,” the Congress leader said even as the violence in Nuh was perpetrated by Islamist mobs against Hindus.
Notably, the Gandhi scion left immediately after his address but courted a new controversy. Union Minister Smriti Irani while responding to Rahul Gandhi’s address alleged that he “blew a flying kiss while leaving Lok Sabha after his speech.”
