‘Interesting paradox when PM Modi placed Constitution on his head’: Rahul Gandhi’s jibe in US

“And then the beautiful thing was the first thing he did when he walked into the Lok Sabha, he was sworn in. He took the Constitution of India, and he placed it in his head,” he added. “So, it was an interesting paradox. On one hand, he’s destroying the Constitution. He’s attacking the democratic structure. And then the Indian people have forced him to put it in his head,” Rahul said.

On a level playing field

“I have seen the government of Maharashtra just being taken away from us. I have seen it with my own eyes. I have watched it, as our legislators have been bought in and hooked off and suddenly became BJP legislators. So Indian democracy has been under attack, has been very badly weakened, and now it’s fighting back. And I’m confident that it’ll fight back,” Rahul said.

“If you see the election results, does it give you more hope for a democracy in India?” he was asked.

“Yeah, I mean, it does. But it’s not good enough to say that the Indian voter is resilient and knowledgeable. Because the Indian voter is informed by a whole set of structures. So if we don’t have a level playing field, the voter might be very knowledgeable and resilient (but) it doesn’t really matter,” he said.

“We fought an election with our bank accounts frozen. I don’t know any democracy where that’s happened. Maybe that type of thing happened in Syria or used to happen in Iraq. But we literally sat during our election and spoke to our treasurer and he says, well, we have no money. Now, you can have a resilient voter. You still need to run campaigns. You still need to have conversations. You still need to have meetings,” he said.

“I’ve got 20-plus cases in me. I’m the only person in Indian history to get a prison sentence for defamation. We have a chief minister who’s in jail right now. So, mean, one way of saying it is, yes, the Indian voter is very resilient, and he stands like a rock. Absolutely, he does. But the Indian voter requires an architecture to work on, which is not there,” Rahul said.

Will take reservation beyond 50 percent limit

Rahul clarified that he was misquoted by some people that he was against reservation. “Let me make it clear – I am not against reservation. We will take reservation beyond the limit of 50 per cent,” Rahul said.

“We feel there’s a very deep problem of participation, and we are going to address that problem. I don’t see it as a mandal vs kamandal issue. What we are saying is different than the idea of only reservations. What we are saying is we want a comprehensive understanding first of what’s going on and then we are going to apply a series of policies to correct it, reservation being one of them,” Rahul added.

— with PTI inputs