Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said the Emergency imposed by his grandmother and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975 was a “mistake” and “wrong” but argued the Congress had at no point attempted to capture the country’s institutional framework which is what is happening now. He likened the scenario in India today with that of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In a conversation with Kaushik Basu, professor at the Cornell University, Gandhi said: “There is now one big mother institution called the RSS that is penetrating all Indian institutions. There is not a single one which is not under attack…The judiciary, the press, the bureaucracy, Election Commission… every single institution is systematically being filled by people who have a particular ideology and belong to a certain institution. I would not say eroding, I would say strangling.” Gandhi said he used to wonder “how does a (Hosni) Mubarak win an election with 97 per cent of the vote.” He added: "The crony capitalists figured out is that the RSS is a sort of institution that can be used to capture the political system. And the trade is very much like in Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabis say you let us handle the institutional structure of Mecca and you handle the….the royal family handles the finances of the oil….so there is a split. This is exactly what is happening here.”
