A Vilification
Campaign Against the Leader of the Opposition
Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition, was on a four-day
tour to America between 7th and 10th September
2024. He was in great demand, as Sam
Pitroda, Chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress, said that he was ‘bombarded’
with requests to arrange meeting with Rahul Gandhi. The Indian Community, university
students and faculty, intellectuals, media, law makers, senior US officials, and the like were eager to interact with him. His tour turned out to be very
successful. His interaction with the students, the Indian diaspora and at the
National Press Club show his political maturity and the ability to articulate
and speak on a variety of intricate topics and issues instantaneously without
any notes or a teleprompter. He fielded questions in a freestyle. He comes out
as a visionary leader, having a clear idea of India – a secular liberal all-inclusive nation – that resonates with the ideals of the founding fathers of
the Indian Republic and his great illustrious great grandfather had cherished.
This is, in a nutshell, what Rahul Gandhi had said in
America:
Addressing the Indian diaspora in Dallas, Texas, 8
September, he said: “What is missing in our political system and across parties
is love, respect and humility. Love to all human beings, not necessarily only
people of one religion, one community, one caste, one state, or to those who
speak one language. Respect to everybody who is trying to build an India, not
just the most powerful, but the weakest; and humility, not in others, but in
oneself… RSS believes that India is one idea. We believe that India is a
multiplicity of ideas. We believe everybody should be allowed to
participate…dream. Everybody should be given space regardless of caste,
language, religion, tradition and history.”
Responding to a question on how long caste-based reservation
would continue in India, during his interaction with the students of Georgetown
University, Washington DC, 9 September, he said: “If you look at the Indian
government, there are 70 bureaucrats who run the government. Of the 70 people,
there is no tribal, three Dalits and three OBCs, a minority… the fact is they
aren’t getting participation. We will think of ending reservation when India is
a fair place. And India is not fair place now” (next day at the National Press
Club he said his party would increase reservations beyond 50%- the limit the
Supreme Court laid down). He spoke about the absence of a level-playing field
in the recent Lok Sabha election, and said had there been a level-playing
field, the BJP would not have secured 240 seats.
Speaking about the political fight in India, he said:
“First of all, you have to understand what the fight is about. The fight is not
about politics. That is superficial. The
fight is about whether he (pointing to a Sikh in the audience), as a Sikh, is
going to be allowed to wear his turban in India, and he, as a Sikh, is going to
be allowed to wear a Kada (bracelet), or he, as a Sikh, is going to be
able to go to a gurudwara. That is what the fight is about, not just for him,
for all religions… what the RSS 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 how he was trying to highlight the assault on
religious minorities and marginalised sections in India by the extreme
rightwing elements, who subscribe to the political Hindutva ideology of the
Modi government; and he didn’t say that the Sikhs were denied the right to
freedom of religion in India. What he said “was in line with his broad political
position where he has sought to frame India’s domestic political competition as
one between the vision based on respect for diversity of all religions, languages,
and regions, and commitment to the Constitution and the BJP’s vision based on a
hierarchical social order and against the Constitution and diversity” (HT
12/9/24).
On the final day of his US visit, Rahul Gandhi
interacting with the media at the National Press Club, 10 September, was sharp
in his criticism of the Modi government’s handling of the border face-off with
China. He said Modi wasn’t able to control China and argued that the
Chinese troops have occupied Indian territory in Ladakh. That is a disaster. He
posed questions to the media anker: “How would America react if a neighbour
occupied 4,000 square kilometers of your territory? Would any President be able
to get away with saying that he has handled that well?”
And covering a wide spectrum of topics, he talked
about the state of democracy in India and how his party was fighting back and
how he was the only person in Indian history to get a prison sentence for
defamation: “I can say to you that Indian democracy for the last 10 years was
broken. It is fighting back, but it was broken. We fought an election with our
bank accounts frozen. I don’t know any
democracy where that has happened. May be that type of thing happened in Syria
or used to happen in Iraq.”
As usual, instead of responding to the issues raised
by the Leader of the Opposition, the ruling party carried a diatribe calling
him ‘anti-India’ and ‘anti-national, divisive’, out to damage the image of
India abroad, by willfully misquoting him and associating him with something
that he never said. They created a false
narrative that he was against the reservation and against the Sikhs. Rahul Gandhi only said what he has been saying
in India at public rallies and inside and outside the parliament. The criticism
of the BJP-RSS divisive communal politics is deliberately construed as defaming
India, forgetting the fact it was Modi who on umpteen times, during his visits
abroad, insulted India, even went to the extent of saying that the Indians,
before his advent to power in 2014, considered having committed some sin in
their previous birth to have been born in India.
Impacted by what Rahul Gandhi said in America, the BJP
unleashed a well-orchestrated vilification campaign to discredit and malign
him, its rabble rousers using abusive violent language. It fielded top ministers
to counter him to control the damage and save the party. It is an admission that no single BJP leader
is capable of taking on him. To ‘refute’
Rahul Gandh’s hard hitting criticism of the Hindutva ideology and the
governance model, the BJP deployed, Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh,
Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Kiran Rijiju, Hardeep Singh Puri, Assam Chief Minister
Himanta Biswa Sharma and Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar. They deliberately twisted
and distorted what he had said and set a false narrative, making the truth a
causality. It is obvious that they are nervous and worried about the relentless
attack of the government policies and its governance by Rahul Gandhi and his
growing popularity in India and abroad. In the free-for-all atmosphere ignited
by a rattled BJP, some misguided zealots of the party threatening to harm him
physically, whom the Modi government refuses to rein in.
The BJP failed to rebut Gandhi’s fundamental
accusation that the BJP-RSS views India as ‘one idea’, as against the Congress
party’s view that India is a’ multiplicity of ideas.’ And, instead of taking on
Gandhi headlong and defending the BJP-RSS Hindu-centric approach, they have
accused him of tarnishing and maligning India’s image, as if BJP-RSS is India.
The Hindutva agenda which Gandhi keeps slamming is downright indefensible.
As a commentator on foreign politics and domestic
politics S.N.M. Abdi says, “One doubts whether there are takers any more for
such blabbering even among the BJP faithful… The BJP has been gunning for
Gandhi since 2014 as it knows too well that if any political party is capable
of evicting the BJP from power, it is the Congress party which Gandhi leads” (FPJ
17/9/24). And yet, nothing stopped Modi from restating the false charge against
the Congress family, at an election rally in Haryana on 14 September, that “if
they come to power, they will end reservation for Dalits and the downtrodden.”
This is how he has been carrying a smear campaign against the Nehru-Gandhi
family because he perceives it as a threat to his position.
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