New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi’s interaction at Cambridge has been widely covered by India’s sickular media.
Try traditionally Congress friendly television channels and ‘nothing doing’ websites, and one will find the sickularly-perceived energetic talented (despite repeated electoral defeats) Rahul Gandhi driving home the ‘print and point’ and also speaking and sharing his intellect-how India is not a ‘nation’ but just a union of states.
But who bothers about sickular media and the credibility factor? Social media has a few answers to this good old anti-Hindu and even anti-India games.
One Siddharth Verma, a civil servant at IRTS Association and now a research scholar in public policy at Cambridge, had tweeted to tell the world that he had ‘questioned’ former Congress chief Rahul on his repeated assertions that India is not a nation but only a union of states.
“….In Cambridge, I questioned Mr Rahul Gandhi on his statement that – India is not a nation but a Union of States. He asserted that India is not a nation but the result of negotiation between states,” tweeted Verma from
Twitter handle @Sid_IRTS.
Yesterday, in Cambridge, I questioned Mr. Rahul Gandhi on his statement that "India is not a nation but a Union of States". He asserted that India is not a nation but the result of negotiation between states. (His complete response will be shared once uploaded by organisers) pic.twitter.com/q5KluwenMf
— Siddhartha Verma (@Sid_IRTS) May 24, 2022
In the video that has gone viral – Verma is heard saying – “You (Rahul Gandhi) quoted Article 1 of the Constitution saying India, i.e Bharat, is a Union of States. If you turn the page back and read the preamble, it does mention India as a nation. Bharat itself is one of the oldest surviving civilisations in the world. And the term finds its origins in Vedas…even Chanakya described India as a nation to his students while teaching at Takshashila.”
Rahul did not agree and pointedly asked if Chanakya had used the word “nation” while describing the idea of India to his students. To this, Verma responded, saying Chanakya used the term “Rashtra”, a Sanskrit word for “nation”, to characterise India. However, the Congress leader is found insisting that “Rashtra” meant “Kingdom” and not “nation”.
Verma, too stuck to his guns and maintained, “My question to you is that, as a political leader, don’t you think your idea of India is not only flawed and incorrect but also destructive as it attempts to whitewash a history of thousands of years?”
“The term nation is a western concept,” says Rahul in the video, adding – “The term nation is a western concept.”
Verma remained defiant and countered him, saying, “So when I talk about nations, I don’t just talk about political entities because we have had these experiments across the world. You had the USSR, you had Yugoslavia, you had the United Arab Republic. So unless nations have a strong socio-cultural and emotional bonding and a composite culture, a Constitution cannot make a nation. Nations make constitutions.”
It could be surprising for many, but Congress ‘intellectuals’ and India’s sickular intellectuals would look the other way as the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family almost suggests that it was a ‘power arrangement’ between the states and provinces that have brought all together for India and the centre is only a “negotiation”.
“India is described in the Indian Constitution as a union of states and not a nation. One cannot rule over the people of a state in India. Different languages and cultures cannot be suppressed. It is a partnership, not a kingdom,” claimed Rahul Gandhi.
In his speech, Rahul Gandhi blasted the Modi government and insisted that the power arrangement between the states and the centre is a “negotiation”, and insinuated that India did not have a single national identity.
Jawaharlal Nehru had penned a celebrated book called ‘Discovery of India’ and ran away with all the credit for decades for being intellectual and modern.
The ‘dynasty’ was thrust upon the people of India for decades, and attempts are on to bring them the same family and scion to guide India’s destiny. Paradoxically, such a man in the garb of appearing more educated than others says India is only a ‘union of states’ and not a nation.
Sadly, the concept of Bharat does not exist for him. Some years back, India watcher Mark Tully wrote, “Nehru had his vanity and revelled in adulation of the crowds…”; it is high time the people of India, the same crowd should decide about publically boycotting and staging a strong protest against Nehru’s great-grandson.
Bharat is eternal for millions of Indians. It is our mother, and the Congress party needs to be retold this rather assertively.
There is a pattern to what Rahul has said. This is just not his personal or ill-prepared opinion.
Dr Manmohan Singh, as the Prime Minister of India, in his speech at Oxford after he was given an honorary degree, had almost glorified the erstwhile British Raj.
“Today, with the balance and perspective offered by the passage of time and the benefit of hindsight, it is possible for an Indian Prime Minister to assert that India’s experience with Britain had its beneficial consequences too. Our notions of the rule of law, of a Constitutional government, of a free press, of a professional civil service, of modern universities and research laboratories have all been fashioned in the crucible where an age-old civilisation of India met the dominant Empire of the day,” Dr Singh had said.
He further said – “Our judiciary, our legal system, our bureaucracy and our police are all great institutions, derived from British-Indian administration and they have served our country exceedingly well.”
As if Bharat never had such institutions. The fact of the matter is that the Panchayat system is about the ‘rule of five’, and that’s what democracy is all about.
