Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Mar 7: Giving a new twist to the Congress former president Rahul Gandhi’s persistent attack on the Narendra Modi government for allegedly threatening Indian democracy and the democratic institutions in the county, the BJP has launched a major offensive going to the extent of accusing him of “seeking foreign intervention” in the internal matters of the country.
Accusing Gandhi of “shaming the country” on foreign soil by “seeking foreign intervention,” the BJP spokesperson and former minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Tuesday, the “BJP would like to emphatically state with great agony that Rahul Gandhi, in his speeches, has sought to shame India’s democracy, polity, parliament, political system and judicial system” by “telling lies.”
“Rahul Gandhi wants that Europe and US should interfere to save democracy? No matter whose government it is, we have been strongly against any interference in our internal affairs. No foreign country must intervene in India’s internal affairs,” Mr Prasad said. The Congress has denied the charges and accused the BJP of “distorting and twisting” Gandhi’s remarks.
Addressing a presser at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi, Prasad said the BJP thoroughly “disapproved” of Gandhi “misusing the forum of British Parliament to spread shameful lies and unfounded claims” and said there needed to be a “proper rebuttal.” He further said Indians neither listened to Gandhi nor understood him, and that supporting him was a distant thing. He went on to accuse Gandhi of seeking Europe and U.S.’ “intervention”. “Rahul Gandhi has tried to embarrass the country by saying that Europe and America should interfere in the internal affairs of India,” he said.
Mr. Prasad sought reactions from Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and his predecessor Sonia Gandhi on what he termed the “utterly irresponsible” statements and whether the Opposition party disowned them or not.
He also expressed umbrage at Gandhi’s comparison of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mothership of the ruling BJP, with that of the Muslim brotherhood, stating that the Hindutva organisation had been serving society and the nation. He claimed that the Sangh’s ideology and influence had now spread across the country, while the Congress had been shrinking and would do so further in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Gandhi has been on a tour in the United Kingdom where he has addressed various for a including the Cambridge University expressing his views that the ruling BJP had stifled democracy and minority rights in India. Gandhi has said the “collapse of Indian democracy” would “play out on a global scale”, receiving sharp backlash from the BJP.
During a discussion at the Chatham House think tank in London on Monday, Gandhi said the challenges confronting Indian democracy were India’s internal problem and “we will deal with our problem” but added that the problem would play out globally. “Democracy in India is a global, public good. It impacts way further than our boundaries. If Indian democracy collapses, in my view, democracy on the planet suffers a very serious, possibly fatal blow. So, it is important for you too. It is not just important for us. We will deal with our problem, but you must be aware that this problem is going to play out at a global scale. It is not just going to play out in India and what you do about it is, of course, up to you. You must be aware of what is happening in India — the idea of a democratic model is being attacked and threatened.”
During his current tour of the UK, Gandhi has repeatedly said Indian democracy was under threat with the BJP government “controlling all the institutions”. On Monday, he said, “We can see that the reliance on our institutions is reducing and that to me is very, very dangerous. Certainly, there is repair work that needs to be done, on the idea of freedom, independent institutions, a whole bunch of repair work that needs to be done.”
Gandhi repeated what he had said in 2018 likening the RSS to the Muslim Brotherhood and called the organisation a “fascist and fundamentalist outfit.” “When I joined politics in 2004, the democratic contest in India used to be between political parties and I had never imagined that the nature of the contest would change completely. The reason it changed is because one organisation called the RSS, a fundamentalist, fascist organisation has basically captured pretty much all of India’s institutions,” he said.
Asked to describe the RSS, he said, “The RSS is a secret society. It is built along the lines of the Muslim Brotherhood and the idea is to use the democratic contest to come to power and then subvert the democratic contest afterwards. It shocked me at how successful they have been at capturing the different institutions of our country. The press, the judiciary, parliament, the Election Commission and all the institutions are under pressure, and (are) controlled in one way or the other.”
Gandhi alleged that debates had stopped in India. “Some of the biggest decisions like demonetisation, the farmers’ Bills, where large numbers of farmers were out in the street, we were not allowed a conversation in Parliament. The GST we were not allowed. When Chinese troops entered our territory, we were not allowed. So, that stifling made us ask ourselves a fundamental question … How do we communicate with the people of India when the media is biased and when the institutions are captured? The answer we came up with within the Congress party was this walk (Bharat Jodo Yatra) across the country.”
At another event organised in the Grand Committee Room of the House of Commons by Labour Party MP Virendra Sharma, Gandhi came across a faulty microphone and quipped, “Our mikes are not out of order, they are functioning, but you still can’t switch them on. That’s happened to me a number of times while I am speaking.”
In response to a question at Chatham House, Gandhi said India was undergoing a transformation and indicated that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government perhaps was caught off guard by the shift from rural to urban. “We were focusing a lot on the rural space and we missed the ball at the beginning on the urban space. That is a fact,” he said.
He added that “it was a ridiculous” idea to claim that the Congress was “gone” now that the BJP is in power. “As far as the coercion and violence are concerned, it is not that the Congress is saying…you just got to travel in India and see…what is being done to the Dalit community, tribal community, to the minorities…There are articles all across in the foreign press all the time that there is a serious problem with Indian democracy,” he said.
On India-Pakistan relations, the Congress MP said he believed it was important to have good relations with all neighbouring countries but that depends on the actions of the Pakistanis. “If the Pakistanis are promoting terrorism in India, that becomes very difficult. And, that does happen.”
Besides Prasad, another BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawala tweeted that Gandhi was demanding “foreigners to meddle into our affairs on the soil of a country that once ruled us.”