Within the first few days of his involvement with the Indian diaspora, American think tanks, and journalists, former Congress president and senior Congress politician Rahul Gandhi were engaged in scandals. During his 10-day visit to the United States, Rahul Gandhi is holding a series of meetings and dialogues with various organisations and individuals. Critics allege that he is connected to groups, organizations, and individuals that have direct ties to Pakistan, as well as organisations perceived as posing a potential threat to Indian democracy. Disinfo Lab, an organisation that studies information warfare and psychological warfare, issued a series of tweets claiming that Rahul Gandhi’s meeting or interaction with non-resident Indians on June 4 at the Javits Centre in New York was organised by individuals associated with the “Pak Jamaat-e-Islami and Muslim Brotherhood-linked fronts.” The Pakistan ISI funds and propagates these organisations in order to wage war against India. Furthermore, according to Disinfo Lab, some of the event’s organisers are directly or indirectly linked to Pakistan.
Rahul’s Anti-India Outreach in the US
Extremists affiliated with the Jamaat-e-Islam (JeI) of Pakistan and the Muslim Brotherhood are planning to host the Congress leader’s New York event on 4 June 2023. According to the Twitter handle of the investigative website Disinfo Lab, an NRI meeting with Gandhi took place at New York’s Javits Centre.
However, the coordinator’s list includes people with anti-Indian extremist ties. Tanzeem Ansari, for example, is the Amir of the Muslim Community of New Jersey’s (MCNJ) Outreach Committee. MCNJ, for its part, is led by Jawad Ahmed, a Pakistan-born Imam. According to the Disinfo Lab findings, Ahmed is the project director of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA).
The ICNA, an organization with radical Islamist ideologies, is connected to Pakistan’s JeI, revealing the associations of Ansari and Ahmed with an anti-India group. This particular organization has expressed admiration for terrorist factions like the Hizbul Mujahideen and has commended its leader, Syed Salahuddin, for his dedication to the “cause of Kashmir’s separation from India.”
According to the Twitter thread, another event coordinator, Mohammed Aslam is a member of the Muslim Centre of Greater Princeton (MCGP), which appears to be an ICNA partner. It is pertinent to note that the founder of the banned organisation Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) is also a member of ICNA.
Furthermore, another self-appointed planner for the RG event, Minhaj Khan, is affiliated with the anti-India lobbying group Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC). According to Disinfo Lab findings, IAMC continuously targets India under the guise of human rights, religious freedom, and spreads fake news to incite communal conflict in India.
According to the thread, the IAMC hired a US lobbying firm and paid them USD 55,000 to lobby the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) against India in 2013-14, under Dr. Manmohan Singh’s administration. https://twitter.com/DisinfoLab/status/1663583461825982465
Rasheed Ahmed, the Executive Director of IAMC, is also the Executive Director of another Jamaat-affiliated ‘charity’ front, Islamic Medical Association of North America (IMANA), which took advantage of India’s goodwill and raised millions of dollars in the guise of aiding India, but syphoned off all the money.
Irrespective of which political party holds power in India, these groups actively pursue actions that are detrimental to the interests of the country.
Not Rahul’s first time
The IAMC held a press conference in February 2022 to announce the publication of a report titled “Persecution as State Policy,” which claims to provide “detailed accounts of violence by state and non-state actors against religious minorities in India” and actively advocated to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) to classify India as unsafe in terms of religious freedom. USCIRF, which reports to the US State Department and was established by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, is a Congressionally mandated entity rather than a non-governmental organisation, interest organisation, or advocacy group. Rahul Gandhi has also been photographed in a meeting room with Sunita Vishwanath and others, including the Congress’ foreign affairs department chief Sam Pitroda. Sunita Vishwanath is said to be allegedly connected with George Soros and his NGOs. Soros, a multibillionaire, is claimed to have supported groups and organisations that spread misinformation about India. Following the image came out, BJP’s national social media head Amit Malviya assaulted Rahul Gandhi with this tweet.
During a freewheeling speech at the National Press Club in Washington DC, Rahul Gandhi appeared to be supporting Vivek Raghuvanshi, who is an espionage case under. He was detained in India by the CBI for leaking confidential information about India’s defence and research to foreign powers. Gandhi shouted out at the Indian government during this interview, claiming, “There is a weakening of press freedom in India.” He feels that before the Modi regime, press freedom was unrestricted. The interviewer at the National Press Club seems unaware of the countless journalists who have been imprisoned in Congress-ruled states in the past and even of late. The questioner appears to have relied on anti-Modi briefing material with no fact-checking.
In response to this, Amit Malviya made the following tweet
The interviewer at the Press Club then misunderstood the CAA as a law intended to deport Muslim citizens from India, a factual error that Rahul Gandhi neglected to correct. He even went on to refer to the Indian Union Muslim League as a secular party. “The Muslim League is a completely secular party,” Gandhi stated. Over the past decade, radical Islamists affiliated with the Muslim League, have been responsible for the deaths of numerous workers associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in Kerala’s “killing fields.” The Muslim League, in contrast, is secular since the Congress party is willing to prioritize power over protecting the lives of Hindus. The IUML, of which Rahul talks here, is Jinnah’s Muslim League’s heir.” Union ministers and BJP leaders attacked Rahul Gandhi’s statement on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling him a “specimen.” The admiring interviewer was unconcerned about such a representation of India’s first Backward Class Prime Minister. While Joshi referred to Rahul Gandhi as “fake Gandhi,” Naqvi remarked that if India did not have democracy, Rahul Gandhi would not have been allowed to fly to the US and criticise a duly elected administration.
At the University of California, Rahul Gandhi said, “They can sit with God and explain to him what is going on, and our Prime Minister is one such specimen. If Modiji and God sat down, he would explain to God how the universe works, and God would be perplexed by what he had created.” The organisers of these events seem to have gone through considerable pains to ensure that such viewpoints were aired without causing noticeable discomfort to the crowd.
These are not the only times in which Mr. Gandhi has borne his venomous teeth against India. In a recent interview with an Italian daily he declared that, Democratic institutions are collapsing. Parliament is no longer in session. I have not been able to speak for two years because every time I do, they take my microphone away. The power dynamic is skewed. Justice is not impartial. Centralism is unquestionable. “There is no longer free press.” He said that “manifestation of thought” is illegal in India. “Wealth concentration is scandalous. Hindu zealots from the RSS faction have penetrated and conditioned every institution.” Only Rahul has the ability to malign India in such a short amount of time. Rahul calls the hallowed parliament into question and asserts that there is no freedom in India. By establishing an unsettling parallel between RSS and fascism in the past, he invokes the shocking notion that Indians chose a party not of their own free choice. The most interesting inquiry, though, should be about Congress’ political losses.
When the Congress cannot win, they tend to dispute the poll and remain mute when they do win, like in the case of the Congress triumph in Himachal Pradesh. And in the case of the Indian parliament, it has been more productive during Modi years than during UPA times. According to PRS Legislative Research, the Lok Sabha has recorded a productivity rate of 84% over the past five years, which is significantly higher compared to the Rajya Sabha’s rate of 65%. To provide some context, during the UPA-II period, the Lok Sabha’s productivity was a mere 63%.
In 2017, Rahul Gandhi delivered a speech at the University of California, Berkeley, where he took a jibe at the BJP and the government led by Narendra Modi while discussing the topic of ‘India at 70’. While stating India is under attack, he also stated that the Modi government was paying attention only to the top 100 companies in India. We should remember that this was a time when the Modi government was trying to shore up investment to boost Indian manufacturing, for which the yields have started to come. In 2018, while speaking at a convention of NRIs in Bahrain, his first foreign visit since taking over the party’s reins, Rahul Gandhi slammed the BJP-led government at the Centre, stating that “the anger is visible in the streets and is rising rapidly.” After suffering hard losses in UP and other major states, the only anger that was rising was his own for his failure to lead the party to any major electoral victory.
In 2018 again, Rahul spoke in Malaysia, a country that took a consistent stand against India on the Kashmir issue but Rahul does not seem to be bothered about it. Rahul callously stated how he would have thrown the ‘file for demonetisation decision’ if he was the PM, but it seems that he will never be PM if he questioned an official government decision in a not-so-friendly country abroad. These are only a few instances but these throw light into how the ideology of the PM aspirant works.
The protagonist wants to win over Indian voters, but at the same time, he questions the integrity of India abroad, bordering on anarchist tendencies. What does Rahul want? A broken India with a weak state? His sharp Left turn also comes into play when it comes to domestic politics. The recently concluded 85th plenary session of the party also gives a message in this direction. From being a party committed to centrist values to profiling it as a New Left outfit lambasting industrialists and entrepreneurs and putting forth more state control in governance. Rahul Gandhi surrounds himself with family loyalists, many of them corrupt, and not necessarily by the people who are either domain experts or who have a sound understanding of the ground realities of India. The cockpit of Congress is populated entirely by the dynasts, loyalists, and sycophants or darbaris who speak on extreme leftist lines. Rahul and his coterie have been propounding more nationalism and taking a U-turn to the socialist era where there is more state control in production and distribution. From the idea of distribution of wealth by large cash transfers to reviving the Old Age Pension Scheme Rahul is determined to bring a stop to India’s growth trajectory and rising private manufacturing capabilities. For example, as per RBI’s 2022 Handbook of Statistics on Indian States, Congress ruled Himachal, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh are the worst off among Indian states in case of fiscal prudence. The country will be heading to an unsavable destination if the country by mistake votes a Congress lead government into power.
Rahul Gandhi’s politics, as well as the party’s elitism, disrespect for India’s old ethos and values, arrogance, and top-down decision-making, have killed the Congress. And it now appears impossible that Rahul can save himself and the party from the depths of unethical politics and Leftist philosophy, which the people of India have little regard for.
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