Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, May 21: Faced with attacks from the regional parties for his “big brotherly” remarks on opposition parties, the former Congress president Rahul Gandhi has sought to clarify that his comments at the party’s Udaipur conclave had been “misconstrued” and he never projected the Congress as the “big daddy.”
In a bid to mollify the angry remarks from the leaders of the regional parties, Gandhi said the Congress was in no way “superior” to other opposition parties. He said all the parties were fighting the same battle but added that the “ideological battle that is taking place is between the national vision of the RSS and the national vision of the Congress.”
His clarifications came after angry retorts from various regional parties, many of them the Congress’ close allies, on his remarks at the just-concluded “Chintan Shivir” of the Congress in Udaipur that the Congress alone can fight the BJP at the national level as regional parties neither have an ideology nor a centralised approach. The remarks upset many parties in the opposition who traced the recent electoral outcomes to establish that many of the regional parties had better track records against the BJP than the Congress in various state Assembly elections.
Opting for a more nuanced position during an interaction in London, Gandhi said the Congress was not winning elections because of polarisation and the dominance of the media by the BJP. He added that the fight in India was not a political fight, “it is not a fight between one political organisation and a set of other political parties.”
“We are now fighting the institutional structure of the Indian state which is being captured by an organisation which means the only way for us… we will get no respite from the institutional framework of our country… the only way for us is to go to the large mass of the India people. And that is not just the Congress… that is for all opposition parties,” he said.
He said the Congress would have to think about an organisational system which was much closer to a large mass of the people. “And we also have to think of large-scale mass movements on issues like unemployment, prices, regional issues and we have to coordinate with our friends in the opposition. So I don’t view the Congress as the big daddy. It is a group effort with the opposition but it is a fight to regain India.”
Asked whether he was cementing collaboration with other parties to move forward, he said: “Yes. And the point I made in Udaipur which was misconstrued is that this is an ideological battle now and it is a national ideological battle which means that, of course, we respect… for example the DMK as a Tamil political organisation, but the Congress is the party that has the ideology at the national level. So the Congress will have to think about itself as a structure that is enabling the opposition. In no way is the Congress superior to the other opposition parties. We are all fighting the same battle… they have their space… we have our space. But the ideological battle that is taking place is between the national vision of the RSS and the national vision of the Congress,” he said.
In his concluding remarks at the Udaipur Chintan Shivir last week, Gandhi had said the Congress alone can fight the BJP as the regional parties neither have an ideology nor a centralised approach. “Regional parties belong to some caste. They don’t represent everyone,” he had said.
“This battle cannot be fought by a regional party. Because this is a battle of ideology. The ideology of the RSS is fighting against the ideology of the Congress. BJP will talk about the Congress, its leaders and workers but will not talk about regional parties. Because they know that regional parties have a space but they cannot defeat the BJP because they don’t have an ideology. They have different approaches. We have a centralised approach. And our fight is about ideology,” he said.
On why the BJP is winning elections and Congress is not despite issues like unemployment and rising prices, he attributed it to “polarisation and total dominance of the media.” “Also, there is another thing which one has to accept which is that the RSS has built a structure that has penetrated into the large mass. And the opposition parties and the Congress need to build such structures. And we need to go much more aggressively to the large mass of people… the 60-70 per cent of people who do not vote for the BJP and we need to do it together,” he said.
However, Gandhi’s comments on the Indian Foreign Service and its alleged docility to the party in power at the centre, also drew sharp reactions from the external affairs minister S Jaishankar. Rahul Gandhi during the conversation had alleged that the Indian Foreign Service had become arrogant and does not listen.
“I was talking to some bureaucrats from Europe and they were saying that the Indian Foreign Service has completely changed. They don’t listen to anything; they are arrogant. Now, they are just telling us what orders they are getting. There is no conversation. You can’t, you can’t do that,” alleged Rahul Gandhi at ‘Ideas for India’ conference in London.
Minister S Jaishankar, a former diplomat, countering the remarks, called it “defending national interest” and a sign of “confidence.” “Yes, the Indian Foreign Service has changed. Yes, they follow the orders of the Government. Yes, they counter the arguments of others. No, its not called Arrogance. It is called Confidence. And it is called defending National Interest,” the Minister tweeted with a 19-second video clip of Rahul Gandhi’s statement.
Joining the exchange was Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala, who posted a counter to the Minister’s rebuttal. “Yes, it is also called being subservient to the political masters in face of foreign policy bloopers. Yes, it is called not being able to stand up to China in face of illegal occupation of our territory. Yes, it is called furthering the agenda of a party rather than the Nation,” Surjewala responded to Jaishankar’s tweet attacking Gandhi.
The BJP had accused the Congress leader of harming India in his “hate” against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and alleged his frequent critical remarks about the country from foreign soils amounted to “betraying” it.