Amid the BJP uproar over his speech in the US, Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday clarified that his statement on reservations was misrepresented. He clarified that he is not against reservation and reiterated the Congress's stance of removing the 50 per cent cap on reservation.
"Yesterday someone misquoted me as saying that I'm against reservation. I have been saying this again and again... we will take reservation beyond the limit of 50 per cent," Rahul Gandhi said during an interview at the National Press Club in the US.
Rahul Gandhi had on Tuesday in an interaction with the students of Georgetown University in US made it clear that the Congress will only think of doing away with reservation when the country reaches a "fair place."
"We will think of scrapping reservations when India is a fair place. And India is not a fair place, Gandhi told students at the university here in response to a question on reservation and how long it would continue. When you look at the financial numbers, then tribals get 10 paise out of 100 rupees; Dalits get 5 rupees out of 100 rupees, and OBCs get a similar number. The fact of the matter is that they're not getting participation," Gandhi said.
"The problem is that 90 per cent of India is not able to play. Go through the list of every single business leader in India. I've done it. Show me the tribal name. Show me the Dalit name. Show me the OBC name. Out of the top 200, I think there's one OBC. They're 50 per cent of India. But we're not treating the symptom” he said.
Speaking to reporters at the National Press Club Gandhi also talked about what he felt as the situation of democracy in India. Taking an indirect jibe at BJP and RSS, he said that Indian democracy was broken for the past ten years.
"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," he said.
Rahul also came down heavily on RSS and BJP for its policies.
"What the RSS is basically saying is that certain states are inferior to other states. Certain languages are inferior to other languages. Certain religions are inferior to other religions. Certain communities are inferior to other communities. This is what the fight is about, that is the ideology of the RSS. Tamil, Marathi, Bengali, Manipuri. These are all inferior languages. That's what the fight is about," he said.
He further said that the BJP has no "understanding" of India.
"India is called a union of states. And in the Constitution, it's written clearly. India, that is Bharat, is a union of states. It means it's a union of languages, traditions, histories, etc... They say this is not a union. These are separate things," he said.
Rahul's statements in the US created a storm back home with BJP leaders noising their criticism.
Union Minister Amit Shah termed his statements as "anti-national" and said that Gandhi habitually makes such statements which "threaten the nation's security and hurt sentiments."
"Standing with forces that conspire to divide the country and making anti-national statements have become a habit for Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party. Whether it is supporting the JKNC's anti-national and anti-reservation agenda in J&K or making anti-India statements on foreign platforms," Shah alleged.