The fallout of Rahul Gandhi’s intervention plea

Rahul may pretend to forget his own party’s dubious commitment to democracy, but he does not have a magic wand to induce collective amnesia among 1.4 billion people.
Image used for illustrative purposes only. (Express illustration |Sourav Roy)
Image used for illustrative purposes only. (Express illustration |Sourav Roy)

In several engagements that he had during his recent visit to the United Kingdom, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi repeatedly referred to the collapse of democracy in the country and virtually beseeched western democracies to intervene in India’s internal affairs. His justification for what one may call foreign intervention is that India is the world’s largest democracy and has an impact beyond the country’s borders. Further, if India’s democracy collapses, democracy will suffer a “fatal blow” across the globe.

Is it not shocking that the leader of India’s Grand Old Party which fought against colonial oppression and for the country’s freedom is now imploring Americans and Europeans to meddle in India’s internal affairs, that too in the 75th year of India’s Independence?

Equally shocking is the string of falsehoods that he has uttered during his interactions with academics, parliamentarians and media during that visit. Rahul Gandhi appears to be a congenital critic of the Sangh Parivar and Narendra Modi. As a result, a running theme in his speeches is his visceral hatred for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This makes him say things that are often far from the truth.

Here are a couple of examples of his falsehoods: He says there was no debate on the Goods and Services Tax (GST). In case he does not know, the GST was first mooted in the 2006–07 budget by the government led by his party! Parliament approved GST through the Constitution 101st Amendment Act, 2016.

Further, the finance ministers of all states are members of the GST Council and it goes a long way in strengthening India’s federal structure. Rahul Gandhi’s statement about GST, therefore, smacks of dishonesty. Instead of running it down, he ought to have hailed it as an exemplary model of federalism and democracy.

Secondly, he says that the RSS is a secret society seeking to subvert democracy. It would be appropriate at this juncture to tell him that when his grandmother Indira Gandhi imposed a fascist regime in India in 1975–77, as many as 3,254 members of the RSS went to jail in defence of democracy. Also, material obtained by this writer from the National Archives in New Delhi shows that among political parties, the highest number of agitators against Indira Gandhi’s dictatorship who were jailed (772) were from the Jana Sangh. All of them were incarcerated under the dreaded Maintenance of Internal Security Act. So, who are the fascists in India?

Thirdly, he claims that the opposition’s voice is stifled in Parliament and the microphones are switched off when MPs criticise the government. This is absolutely baseless and in any case it does not lie in his mouth to talk of what happens in Parliament. According to PRS Legislative Research which tracks the working of MPs, Rahul Gandhi’s attendance in the Winter session 2022 was a grand zero percent. It “improved” to 40% in the budget session 2023 and he spoke only once in 2022.

Fourthly, he claimed that his phone was being tapped by the Modi government and that “it was simply not happening when we were in power”. This from a man who hails from a family that imposed a fascist regime in the country! Those who worked for the Intelligence Bureau when Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were in power, including Maloy Krishna Dhar, provide us clinching evidence of telephone-tapping and other nefarious activities by those regimes.

But the worst lie that he uttered was what he said about Narendra Modi and the Sikhs. Pointing to an Indian Sikh gentleman in the audience in Cambridge University, he told him that Narendra Modi did not regard him (the Sikh) “as an Indian”. He said that in Modi’s eyes, the Sikh gentleman “is a second-class citizen”. This is not only fallacious but smacks of treachery. It is an attempt to encourage fissiparous tendencies among sections of the population and deserves to be condemned in the most severe manner.

Rahul Gandhi may pretend to forget his own party’s dubious commitment to democracy, but he does not have a magic wand to induce collective amnesia among 1.4 billion people. Here is a very brief list:

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, introduced the first amendment in the Constitution in 1951 to curtail freedom of expression guaranteed in Article 19 (1)(a) by imposing “reasonable restrictions” on that freedom; Nehru, on the advice of then Congress President Indira Gandhi, displayed his aversion to the growth of other parties when he dismissed the Communist government in Kerala in 1959; the Nehru-Gandhis ranked first in the gross misuse of Article 356 to impose President’s Rule in non-Congress states; Indira Gandhi turned a vibrant democracy into a dictatorship by imposing the dreaded Emergency in 1975, incarcerating all her political opponents, emasculating Parliament and the judiciary, and compulsorily sterilising the population, specially targeting the Muslim minority; and Rajiv Gandhi introduced the draconian Defamation Bill to stifle the media in 1988 after he found himself trapped in the Bofors bribery scandal. The list is endless. Therefore, it does not lie in the mouth of any leader of the Congress Party, and in particular, any member of the Nehru-Gandhi family to talk about the virtues of democracy.

Hearing Rahul Gandhi beseech other nations to interfere in India’s internal affairs and “save” India’s democracy, one is reminded of Dr B R Ambedkar’s prescience. Many years ago, on November 25, 1949, to be precise—while summing up the debate on the Constitution, Dr Ambedkar cautioned the nation and successive generations of the consequences of infidelity. He said: “What perturbs me greatly is the fact that not only India has once before lost her independence, but she lost it by the infidelity and treachery of some of her own people.

In the invasion of Sindh by Mahommed-Bin-Kasim, the military commanders of King Dahar accepted bribes from the agents of Mahommed-Bin-Kasim and refused to fight on the side of their King. It was Jaichand who invited Mahommed Gohri to invade India and fight against Prithvi Raj and promised him the help of himself and the Solanki Kings. When Shivaji was fighting for the liberation of Hindus, the other Maratha noblemen and the Rajput Kings were fighting the battle on the side of Moghul Emperors.”

The Congress Party must silence this modern-day Jaichand if it ever wishes to win back peoples’ support and confidence.

A Surya Prakash

Former Chairman of Prasar Bharati and scholar of democracy studies

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