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Journalism of Courage
During his ongoing visit to the US, Rahul Gandhi has kept up his attacks on the Narendra Modi government, accusing it of trying to undermine the Constitution and standing in the way of holding a nationwide caste census, themes that defined the Opposition’s campaign in the parliamentary elections.
In his talks at universities abroad in the past few years, Gandhi, as a Congress leader, has accused the BJP government of stifling free speech; indulging in crony capitalism; attacking federalism; capturing Indian institutions, including the media; depriving the Opposition of a level playing field; and spreading communalism in an attempt to destroy India’s pluralism.
Gandhi, at times, has also looked within the Congress for the reasons for its defeat in 2014. Once he argued that a “generational fight” in the party, along with issues of “corruption”, contributed to the defeat. On another occasion, he said a “certain amount of arrogance” crept into his party midway through its second tenure in power and it stopped “conversations with people”.
This time, the Congress leader, on his first international visit as the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, is focusing more on his party’s better-than-expected showing in the parliamentary elections. A close look at his comments during the US tour suggests his themes broadly remain the same but have been reframed slightly to reflect the changed political dynamics in India.
During an interaction at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, Gandhi took forward his argument about institutional bias against the Opposition. The Congress leader said he does not view the elections as being fair. Though the Congress fought an election with its “bank accounts frozen”, it “destroyed the idea of Modi”, Gandhi said.
“When you see the Prime Minister now in Parliament, and I come face to face with him, he is psychologically trapped and he basically cannot come to terms, he cannot understand how this has happened,” Gandhi said.
At an interaction with students of the University of Texas, Dallas, a day earlier, Gandhi argued that “the fear of the BJP” had disappeared. “Within minutes of the election results, nobody in India was scared of the BJP or the prime minister,” Gandhi said.
Gandhi also talked about how the idea of foregrounding the Constitution during the election campaign came about. “Prior to the election, we kept stressing on the idea that the institutions have been captured … we don’t have a fair playing field, the education system is captured by the RSS, the media system is captured, the investigative agencies are captured. And we kept saying this but people were not quite getting it.
“Then in one meeting, one of the people who works with us said, ‘Listen, try holding up the Constitution.’ And so I started holding up the Constitution and everything we said suddenly just exploded. Not to divide it so crudely, but the poor India, disenfranchised India, oppressed India, that India understood that if the Constitution goes the whole game is gone,” he said.
Gandhi said the BJP would be nowhere near 240 seats in a fair election. “They had a huge financial advantage. They locked our bank accounts, (they had) a huge war chest … The Election Commission was doing what they wanted. The entire campaign was structured so Mr Modi could do his thing across the country … So I don’t view it as a free election at all. I view it as a rather controlled election.”
Asked about caste and Hindutva with references to the Mandal Commission report and the Ram Temple movement, Gandhi said at an event, “If we talk about India becoming a modern nation we have to ask the question about participation of 90% of our population. We can’t just ignore it because, frankly, if we go down this path it is not sustainable. So it is not a question of caste or religion or Hindutva or anything else. It is a question of fairness.”
The LoP said he was not interested in living in a country “where 90% of the people do not have access to opportunity”. He added, “The BJP and the RSS do say that don’t ask this question and let a small minority of people just take all the fruits of the country. That is the fight.”
On the policy implications of a caste census, including an increase in reservation, Gandhi said it “would depend on what comes out of these studies”.
Explaining Indian secularism, Gandhi said, “India at its heart is a union of languages, traditions, histories, religions … That is just the design of India. When you have lunch here, you get salad, first course, second course. We don’t get any of that. We get a thali with everything placed inside it and nobody sitting there is saying what is the first course, second course? It is a jumble and all the food has the same value. Nobody says I am going to take the dal, I am going to separate it from the rice, and I am only going to eat the rice, I am not going to eat dal. So this idea of mixing and merging, this is India. In India, this is a very deep philosophical idea.
“The misunderstanding that the BJP and the RSS have is that they think that India is a whole bunch of separate things. It is not. So we don’t need to redefine anything. It is already there.”
Gandhi emphasised he did not hate the PM. “I don’t actually hate Mr Modi. I don’t agree with his point of view but I don’t hate him. In fact, in many moments I empathise with him … He has got a different point of view, I got a different point of view. I have empathy and compassion for what he is doing. And I think that is a much better place to be instead of this him versus me. I don’t think that is productive.”
In the past, Gandhi has analysed political Hindutva in many ways. In one of his interactions during this trip, he said Hindutva tends to look into the past rather than the future.
“India is struggling to imagine the future and when you struggle to imagine a future you start discussing the past … What is Hindutva’s or Modi’s or RSS’s proposal? The proposal is, let’s not discuss the future, let’s talk about the past and that is very dangerous for a country like India, the scale of India and it is also boring,” he said.
Gandhi parried questions on the UCC. “The basic idea is respecting people’s perspectives and believing that all Indian citizens have a unique and different perspective and they should have a space to have that perspective. And that includes religion, language, it includes the clothes you wear, it includes the food you eat … The BJP is proposing a Uniform Civil Code, we have not seen it. We have no idea what they are talking about. For us to comment on it doesn’t make sense. When they pull it out, then we will have a look and we will comment on it.”
