Rahul Gandhi, a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge Judge Business School, delivered a lecture on the topic ‘Learning to Listen in the Twenty-First Century’ at Cambridge University. His speech, as usual, was riddled with outright lies and half-truths.
Rahul Gandhi began his speech by saying, “Everybody knows and its been in news a lot that Indian democracy in under attack. I am the opposition leader in India and we are navigating that space.”
The truth is that democracy is not under attack; however, the Congress is failing to win elections. Rahul attempted to portray his failure as an attack on democracy. Since 2014, the BJP has lost several elections to state parties and the Congress. Congress along with Siva Sena in Maharashtra and Kumarasamy in Karnataka murdered the democracy by preventing a single largest party from forming government. In Maharashtra, they played dirty politics by forming an alliance with the Shiva Sena, which was in a pre-election alliance with the BJP. Isn’t this Congress murdering democracy?
He also claims to be the opposition leader in India. To gain the status of Opposition party in the Indian parliament, a party must secure one-tenth of the seats, or 55 seats. However, in the 2019 elections, Congress won only 52 seats. Even if he meant that he is the leader of the second-largest party, this is not correct because Mallikarjuna Karghe is the president of the Congress and Rahul is only one of 52 Congress members in Parliament.
Rahul added, “Here you can see that picture. This picture was taken in front of the parliament house. That’s where a whole bunch of opposition parliamentarians were just standing there and talking about certain issues. We were just locked up and put in jail. It happened relatively violently. It has happened 3-4 times.”
This is a blatant lie spread by Rahul Gandhi, as no member of Parliament in India has ever been imprisoned for speaking in Parliament .
Rahul cites five reasons why Indian democracy is under attack. Capture and control of the media and the judiciary, surveillance and intimidation using software such as Pegasus, coercion by federal law enforcement agencies, attacks on minorities and Dalits, and dissent suppression are among them.
Claiming that the Indian judiciary is under the control of the BJP is a direct attack on the judiciary’s functioning, for which a criminal contempt of court charge can be filed. It is the same courts which acquitted Congress and DMK leaders in the 2G case. Did it become a good judiciary then? Is Rahul Gandhi implying that a non-biased judiciary exists only when it rules in favour of the Congress?
Rahul claimed that his phone was hacked using Pegasus and that BJP surveillance is undermining democracy. “I myself had Pegasus on my phone. A large number of politicians had Pegasus on their phones. I have been called by intelligence officers who told me, ‘please be careful about what you are saying on the phone because we are sort of recording the stuff,” he said. The Supreme Court said that its technical committee found no conclusive proof that the Pegasus spyware was used in the 29 phones it examined. Rahul Gandhi believes that a lie repeated many times becomes the truth.
According to Rahul Gandhi, the BJP uses federal law enforcement agencies to coerce opposition leaders, proving that democracy is under attack. It is worth noting that Congress MPs caused a commotion in parliament and prevented it from functioning because the Enforcement Directorate summoned Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former party chief Rahul Gandhi in connection with its investigation into alleged money laundering in the National Herald case. The Congress MPs attempted to demonstrate that the Nehru family is above the law by blocking the parliament for a summons from the ED.
The attack on minorities and Dalits in India, he claims, is the fourth reason why Indian democracy is under attack. “Minorities and Dalits are under attack in India” is a piece of propaganda used by the Congress to portray Modi and the BJP as anti-Dalits and anti-minorities. It is worth noting that the BJP is the first government in independent India to give 25% of its cabinet seats to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Members of Parliament.
Rahul also refers the incident in which he and her sister Priyanka were denied entry into Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district. The truth is that the atmosphere in the district was not conducive as a result of the rape incident, and a curfew was also imposed in the district.
The fifth reason he cites to demonstrate that democracy is under attack in India is that the BJP is suppressing dissent. One should remind Rahul that the Congress government in Rajasthan hounded News18 journalist Aman Chopra and arrested him despite a restraining order from the Rajasthan High Court.
The Editor Guild, which previously condemned the arrest of journalists such as Siddique Kappan by BJP government police, has remained silent when journalists are arrested by the Congress government. This shows how Congress despite not being in power for 9 years is able to control institutions.
Rahul also recalled incidents from his recent 4,000-kilometer Bharat Jodo Yatra across 12 states. He described a “face-to-face encounter with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir” to demonstrate the power of listening and nonviolence. Despite security personnel’s warnings about terrorist attacks, he continued his walk. An unidentified man approached Rahul and asked if he had come to listen to the people of the valley, pointing to a group of militants standing nearby.
“I looked at them and thought I was in big trouble… Nothing happened; we just kept going… They didn’t have the power to do anything, even if they wanted to, because I came into that environment to listen, with no violence in me at all,” he said, as he displayed photographs from the Congress-led yatra.
Click here to subscribe to The Commune on Telegram and get the best stories of the day delivered to you personally.