Indian democracy under attack for 10 years, now it’s fighting back: Rahul in US
Indian democracy faced severe attack during the past decade, but finally it is fighting back, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said at a press conference in Washington on Wednesday.
Speaking at the National Press Club, Gandhi said, “I can say that Indian democracy for the last 10 years was broken, but now it’s fighting back.”
“I have seen the government of Maharashtra just being taken away from us. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve watched it, as our legislators bought in and hooked off and suddenly became BJP legislators. So, Indian democracy has been under attack, has been very badly weakened, and now it’s fighting back. And I’m confident that it’ll fight back,” Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, said.
While stating that the election result has given him hope for the future of democracy in the country, Gandhi said Opposition parties did put up a good fight in the Lok Sabha election despite the absence of a level-playing field.
Sharing his own experiences, Gandhi said the Congress Party fought an election with frozen bank accounts.
“We fought an election with our bank accounts frozen. I don’t know any democracy where that’s happened. Maybe that type of thing happened in Syria or used to happen in Iraq. But we literally sat during our election and spoke to our treasurer, and he said, ‘Well, we have no money’. Now, you can have a resilient voter. You still need to run campaigns. You still need to have conversations. You still need to have meetings,” he said.
Gandhi said there are 20-plus cases against him, and he is the only person in the history of the country to get a prison sentence for defamation. “We have a chief minister who’s in jail right now ... yes, the Indian voter is very resilient, and he stands like a rock. Absolutely, he does. But the Indian voter requires an architecture to work on, which is not there,” Gandhi said.
Launching a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gandhi said, “Here’s a Prime Minister of a modern country in the 21st century telling people that he speaks to God. He is different than everybody else. Unlike others he is a non-biological person having a direct link to God. And that for us was a game over (for Modi during the election). We knew that we had defeated him,” Gandhi said.
“And then the beautiful thing was the first thing he did when he walked into the Lok Sabha, he was sworn in. He lifted the Constitution of India to his forehead,” Gandhi said.
“So, it was an interesting paradox. On one hand, he’s destroying the Constitution. He’s attacking the democratic structure. And then the Indian people force him to touch the Constitution to his head,” Gandhi said.
