Washington: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has said the results of the general elections in India this summer destroyed the “idea of Modi” and the “fear” created by the prime minister vanished, becoming “history”.
The Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha is currently on a four-day visit to the United States. He addressed the prestigious Georgetown University and another event in Herndon, a Virginia suburb of Washington DC on Monday.
Addressing the event, Gandhi said the Lok Sabha elections were not fought on a level playing field and claimed that the ruling coalition led by the BJP had collapsed, breaking “right down the middle”.
Asserting that things have changed after the Lok Sabha results were announced, Gandhi said, “The fear created by Modiji vanished in a second. It took years to cultivate that fear, a lot of planning and money was involved but it took only a second for it to evaporate.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi formed a government for the third consecutive time after the Lok Sabha elections this year, however, the BJP did not get a majority on its own.
“I can tell you that the idea of Mr Modi– 56-inch chest, direct connection with God — that’s all gone, its history now,” Gandhi said.
He also claimed the ruling coalition had collapsed and was broken “right down the middle”.
“It’s not just the prime minister, it’s deeper than that. What has happened in India is that the coalition that brought Mr Modi to power has collapsed. It’s broken right down the middle,” he said.
“So you’ll see in these elections that they will struggle. Because the basic idea that Mr Modi is running a government for the people of India is gone,” he added.
Alleging that the Lok Sabha elections were not fought on the same footing, Gandhi said, “I don’t see it as a free election. I see it as a heavily controlled election.”
“I don’t believe that in a fair election, the BJP would come anywhere near 246 seats. I would be surprised,” he said, asserting that the party had a “huge financial advantage”.
“The Election Commission was doing what they wanted. The entire campaign was structured so that Mr Modi could carry out his agenda across the country, with different designs for different states,” Gandhi claimed.
“The Congress party fought the elections with their bank accounts frozen and has basically destroyed the idea of Modi. You can see it because when you see the prime minister now in Parliament…he is psychologically trapped, and he basically cannot come to terms, he cannot understand how this has happened,” he said.
Responding to a question, Gandhi said that halfway through the campaign, Prime Minister Modi didn’t think he would get anywhere near 300 or 400 seats.
“I think early on he realised that this thing’s going wrong. We were getting inputs from regular sources…It was pretty clear that they were in trouble,” he said.
“So, there was this internal thing going on in the prime minister that I could see. And psychologically, how is this now happening? Because he’s a person, as you know, he was in Gujarat for many years, never faced political adversity, then prime minister of India. Suddenly, this idea started to crack,” Gandhi said.
“We knew. When he said that I speak directly to God, we knew that we had actually blown him apart. And that the psychology had gone. So people think that, well, this was the prime minister sort of saying that, look, ‘I’m special, I’m unique, and I talk to God’. But that’s not how we saw it. Internally, we saw it as a psychological collapse, what happened here? How is this thing not working?” he said.
“Now that idea has been replaced,” he said.
Gandhi, who arrived in the US on Saturday, interacted with members of the Indian diaspora and youths in Dallas, Texas. He also plans to meet lawmakers and senior officials of the US government in Washington DC.
RSS believes some religions, languages inferior: Rahul Gandhi
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has accused the RSS of considering some religions, languages and communities of being inferior to others and said that the fight in India is about this and not about politics.
The Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha was addressing a gathering of several hundred Indian Americans in Herndon, a Virginia suburb of Washington DC, on Monday.
“First of all, you have to understand what the fight is about. The fight is not about politics. That is superficial,” Gandhi said as he asked one of the Sikh attendees in the front rows to give his name. “What is your name, brother with the turban,” he asked.
“The fight is about whether a Sikh is going to be allowed to wear his turban in India or a kada in India. Or he, as a Sikh, is going to be able to go to Gurdwara. That’s what the fight is about. And not just for him, for all religions,” said the Congress leader.
Gandhi is currently on a four-day visit to the United States. His first stop was in Dallas which began on Saturday, and he arrived in Washington DC on Monday.
Criticising the RSS for their policies and vision of India, he said, “What the RSS is basically saying is that certain states are inferior to other states. Certain languages are inferior to other languages. Certain religions are inferior to other religions. Certain communities are inferior to other communities. This is what the fight is about.”
“…that is the ideology of the RSS. Tamil, Marathi, Bengali, Manipuri. These are all inferior languages. That’s what the fight is about,” he said, asserting that these issues end up in the polling booth, the Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabha.
“But the fight is about what type of India we are going to have,” he said.
He asserted that regardless of the region one belongs from, “all of you have your history, all of you have your tradition, all of you have your language, and every single one of them is as important as any other one.”
Gandhi also said that the BJP has no “understanding” of India.
“India is called a union of states. And in the Constitution, it’s written clearly. India, that is Bharat, is a union of states. It means it’s a union of languages, traditions, histories, etc,” he said.
“They say this is not a union. These are separate things. Among these, only one is very important. And whose headquarters is in Nagpur,” he said, in a veiled reference to the RSS.
Addressing the diaspora, Gandhi called them “ambassadors of India”. “You’re the bridge between these two great unions of states. You make us very proud,” he said.
“We understand the difficulties and struggles that you have had to deal with. It’s not easy. But when you came here, you came with humility, you came with respect, and you came with affection,” he said.
He said that in a BJP system, a person cannot have two identities. “You cannot be India and at the same time be America. That is what the fight is about. That is what we are trying to do in India,” he said.
“We are saying, don’t spread hatred, spread love. Don’t be arrogant, be humble. Don’t disrespect people, respect people, respect traditions, respect religions, respect languages, respect communities,” Gandhi said.
