Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is in the US on a four-day unofficial trip, slammed the RSS and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, stating that millions of Indians realised that the latter was attacking the Constitution.
The Congress leader, during an interaction with students at the University of Texas in Dallas on Sunday, said the RSS believed that India was one idea. The Congress, however, believed that India was a multiplicity of ideas and everyone needed to be allowed to participate, dream and be given space irrespective of their caste, language, religion, tradition, or history, the Leader of Opposition said.
Rahul's remarks toe the line of Congress's campaign during the last Parliament elections, which mostly focused on the claims that the BJP would change the Constitution. This is said to have helped the party make a strong impact on the ground.
He claimed the fears "crystallised in the election when millions of people in India clearly understood that the Prime Minister of India was attacking the Constitution of India." Rahul said people saw him raise the issue and understood his words.
#WATCH | Texas, USA: Lok Sabha LoP and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi says, "The RSS believes that India is one idea and we believe that India is a multiplicity of ideas. We believe that everybody should be allowed to participate, allowed to dream, and should be given space regardless… pic.twitter.com/uHULrGwa6X
— ANI (@ANI) September 9, 2024
" What people understood in the election clearly, and I saw it happening when I used to raise the Constitution, people understood what I was saying. They were saying that the BJP is attacking our tradition, attacking our language, attacking our states, attacking our histories. Most importantly, what they understood was that anybody who is attacking the Constitution of India is also attacking our religious tradition," he said.
Fear of BJP
Rahul recalled the recent Parliament elections, stating that the fear of BJP vanished within minutes of the election results being declared. " Within minutes of the election result, nobody in India was scared of the BJP or the Prime Minister of India," he said, adding that these are huge achievements of the people of India.
He also briefed on the impact of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, stating that it introduced the idea of love in politics. Rahul Gandhi said the government shut all avenues for the opposition to communicate with people, following which the idea of Bharat Jodo Yatra was born.
The Congress party believes the yatra redefined the political discourse and attribute it to the success of the party in Assembly elections in Karnataka and its overall performance in the Parliament elections.
Rahul added that the Yatra fundamentally changed the way he thought about work. "It completely changed how I view politics, how I view our people, how I communicate, how I listen. To me, the most powerful thing that happened organically was that we introduced certainly for the first time in India, possibly for the first time in many countries, the idea of 'love' in politics," he added.
