On March 5, BJP leader Kapil Mishra tweeted, “Old friend of Indira Gandhi teaching Rahul Gandhi about how one should never talk bad about the country on foreign land,” with a video of an journalist telling Congress MP Rahul Gandhi about Indira Gandhi’s refusal to insult India at an international stage when asked to describe her prison experience following her arrest concerning the jeep scam, urging Rahul Gandhi to learn from his grandmother.
The journalist in the video said, “When she came here at a press conference, in London, after being imprisoned by Morarji Desai, a journalist asked her ‘, What is your experience of prison in India?’ and she said, ‘I don’t want to talk anything bad about India in this conference’. Now you are being constantly attacked in the Indian media for your Cambridge lecture. I hope that you will take some lesson from what Mrs Indira Gandhi said because I am your well-wisher. I like to see you become Prime Minister,” to Rahul Gandhi during his interaction with the Indian Journalists’ Association (IJA) in London.
During his interaction in London, Rahul Gandhi claimed, “There is suppression of voice across the country. The BJP wants India to be silenced because it wants to handover country’s wealth to 4-5 people.”
He claimed, “The media, the institutional frameworks, judiciary, Parliament …These are all under attack and we were finding it very difficult to put the voice, our own voice and also the voice of the people, through the normal channels because the media was not picking up issues like unemployment, price rise, the concentration of wealth, and violence against women.”
Rahul gandhi said, “There is suppression of voice across the country …example is the BBC, but the BBC is just one element of it. The BBC has found out about it now, but it has been going on in India for the last nine years …non-stop. Everybody knows that … journalists are intimidated, they are attacked, they are threatened, and the journalists who toe the line of the government are rewarded. So, it is part of a pattern. If the BBC stops writing against the government everything will go back to normal. All the cases will disappear (and) everything will go back to normal. This is the new idea of India.”
He continued, “They want it to be quiet. They want the Dalits, the lower castes, the Adivasis, the media …they want silence, and they want silence because they want to be able to take what is India’s and give it to their close friends. So that’s basically the idea …distract the population and then hand over India’s wealth to two-three-four five people.” He claimed, “There were periods when there were aberrations. But this is a full-scale attack on the institutional structure … this has never been seen in modern India before.”
Earlier in his Cambridge address, Rahul Gandhi alleged that the basic structure of the Indian democracy is under attack and claimed that an intelligence officer told him about Pegasus spyware installed on his phone. He said, “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. So, this is the constant pressure that we feel. Cases on the Opposition. I have got a number of criminal liable cases for things that should under no circumstances be criminal liable cases. That’s what we are trying to defend.”
It is pertinent to note that the Supreme Court-appointed committee examined 29 mobile phones for Pegasus spyware. The committee stated that while 5/29 mobile phones contain malware, it cannot be concluded whether it is due to Pegasus. The committee said, “On the basis of detailed examination and analysis, it is concluded that five out of 29 phones may have had some infection due to a malware or poor cyber hygiene, and the data available is limited to reach a conclusion that such anomaly is due to Pegasus, despite efforts for months using scientific method.”
Rahul Gandhi further alleged that India’s institutional framework is constrained. He claimed, “Everybody knows, and it’s been in the news a lot, that Indian democracy is under pressure and under attack. I am an Opposition leader in India, we are navigating that (Opposition) space. The institutional framework which is required for a democracy — Parliament, free press, the judiciary, just the idea of mobilisation, moving around — all are getting constrained. So, we are facing an attack on the basic structure of Indian democracy.”
Rahul Gandhi shared his picture where he was held by police personnel, claiming that the Opposition leaders were held for standing in front of the Parliament and talking about issues. He claimed that such incidents have happened relatively violently. He further claimed, “In the Constitution, India is described as a Union of States, and that Union requires negotiation and conversation. It is that negotiation that is under attack and threat. You can see the picture which is taken in front of Parliament House. The Opposition leaders were just standing there talking about certain issues, and we were put in jail. That’s happened 3 or 4 times. It has happened relatively violently. You have also heard of the attacks on minorities and the press. You get a sense of what is going on.”
However, this was not the first time Rahul Gandhi has taken political attacks internationally. On May 20, 2022, Rahul Gandhi accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of stifling voices. He said, “Please realise what the BJP does is shout and stifle voices. What we do is listen. They are two different things; they are two different designs.” He attacked BJP’s cadre-based approach claiming, “A cadre is told you will say this and nothing else. It’s designed to push a particular set of ideas down people’s throats, whether it is the Communist idea or the RSS system. We are not designed like that. We are designed to listen to the people of India and pull out their voice and place it on the table.”
On May 23, 2022, Rahul Gandhi continued his attack against BJP, addressing a session at Cambridge University’s Corpus Christi College. He claimed, “What I see going on is a systematic attack on the institutions that allow India to speak – Parliament, election system, the basic structure of democracy is being captured by one organisation. And, as the conversation is being stamped out, the deep state is entering those spaces and redefining the way that conversation is happening.”
He continued, “My problem with the RSS and the Prime Minister is that they are fiddling with the foundational structure of India. When you play the politics of polarisation, when you isolate and demonise 200 million people, you’re doing something extremely dangerous and you’re doing something that is fundamentally against the idea of India.”
It is pertinent to note that Rahul Gandhi’s tele-on-tele with a lecturer as a part of the ‘Ideas for India’ programme was organised by ‘Bridge India,’ a non-profit think tank associated with ‘Samruddha Bharat’ and George Soros’s Open Society Foundation’s (OSF) Global Vice President Salil Shetty is one of the advisors at ‘Samruddha Bharat.’
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