Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Mar 3: The BJP launched a blistering attack on the former Congress president Rahul Gandhi for his alleged “anti-India campaign” abroad and categorised his claim of being “snooped upon” by the Narendra Modi government as nothing but his “hallucination” and an attempt to keep himself on the headlines as his party getting drubbed by the people of India election after election.
“What we can say for Rahul Gandhi’s hallucinations. If he makes his (Congress) MoU with China public, we will be interested and people of India will also like to know. Who is interested in his telephonic conversations,” BJP spokesperson Tom Vadakkan said on Friday.
BJP’s ire was directed at Rahul Gandhi who earlier this week told the delegates at the Cambridge University about the “threat to democracy” in India and alleged that several politicians, including him, were under surveillance through the Pegasus spyware.
Gandhi made the remarks during a lecture at the Cambridge Judge Business School (Cambridge JBS) on “Learning to Listen in the 21st Century”. BJP national spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill tweeted, “Instead of introspecting on loss of 172 seats out of 180 in N East polls, loss of 50+ elections out of 54 under his command, Rahul Gandhi is busy crying wolf on foreign shores! RG Cambridge speech is Classic Case of ‘Naach Na Jaane, Aangan Tedaa’ or ‘Bad Workman blames his tools’.”
During his lecture, Gandhi alleged that Indian democracy was under threat and several politicians, including himself, were under surveillance. “A large number of political leaders have Pegasus on their phones. I myself had Pegasus on my phone. I’ve been called by intelligence officers who say please be careful of what you say on the phone as we are recording the stuff,” the former Congress chief has claimed.
Mr Vadakkan noted that the Supreme Court has closed the Pegasus matter. He added that Gandhi had not even given his mobile phone for inspection during the inquiry, directed by the Supreme Court, into the Pegasus issue. What was he so scared to hide, the BJP spokesperson asked.
“Why is he not raising questions about the attack on Indians abroad. It has happened in Canada and Australia. The issue is he wants to create headlines wherever he goes and in that process, he loses votes in India because people of India have woken up,” he said.
Addressing the gathering at the Cambridge University, Gandhi had said, “Indian democracy is under pressure, is under attack. I am an Opposition leader in India and we are navigating that space. What is happening is that the institutional framework which is required for a democracy — Parliament, a free press, the judiciary — just the idea of mobilisation, just the idea of moving around … these are all getting constrained. So, we are facing an attack on the basic structure of the Indian democracy.”
He referred to the arrests made during the protest rallies by the opposition parties and claimed that the federal structure of India was under threat. Showing a photograph of the police stopping him and several other party MPs at Vijay Chowk, he said, “That picture is taken in front of Parliament House. That is where a whole bunch of Opposition members of Parliament were just standing there talking about certain issues and we were just locked up and put in jail. And that has happened three or four times. And it has happened relatively violently.”
Gandhi also spoke about the alleged attacks on minorities and attempts to control the media and the judiciary. “You have also heard of the attack on minorities, the attack on the press. So, you get a sense of what is going on. Capture and control of media and judiciary. Surveillance and intimidation. I myself had Pegasus on my phone. A large number of politicians have Pegasus on their phones,” he alleged.
He appreciated some of the good policies of the Modi government including providing gas cylinders to rural women and opening bank accounts by the poor but said a few good performance could not obliterate the threats he posed to Indian system and architecture. “The problem is that if you fundamentally disagree with the foundation of something, I could think about it and say maybe that policy that he has done is not a bad policy, maybe giving ladies gas cylinders and giving people bank accounts is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. But that sort of misses the point. Because in my view Modi is destroying the architecture of India.
“So, I am not bothered about two or three good policies that he is doing if he is blowing our country to smithereens. I think that is what he is doing. He is imposing an idea on India that India cannot absorb. India, as I said, is a union of states. It is a negotiation and if you try to force one idea on a union, it will react,” he said.
“I have got a Sikh gentleman sitting here. He is from the Sikh religion. We have got Muslims in India, Christians in India, different languages in India …They are all India. Mr Narendra Modi says he is not. Mr Narendra Modi says he is a second-class citizen in India. I don’t agree with him. If your disagreement is so fundamental then really talking about three policies that you agree with, I think misses the point,” he added.