Rahul Gandhi’s canards at Cambridge: The Yuvraj at it again

Fresh out of the Congress party’s recently concluded ‘Chintan Shivir’ in Jaipur, Wayanad MP and former Congress president Rahul Gandhi was recently on the UK visit to engage in discussions revolving around India’s stance and its image to mark the 75th year of its Independence. Besides the widely debated ‘Ideas for India’ conference in London which Rahul along with several Opposition leaders attended only to spew venom and project a negative image of India on foreign soil, Gandhi was also invited to the University of Cambridge to talk and interact with university members on the theme of ‘India at 75’. This event was moderated by Professor Shruti Kapila, Associate Professor of Indian History and Global Political Thought at the university. While digging a little into the professor’s political views easily indicated the potential inclination of the interaction, what followed, in reality, was a combination of political propaganda and the undermining of national integrity. India is not a nation From the very beginning of Rahul Gandhi’s conversation with Professor Kapila, he kept asserting that India is not a nation, but a ‘union of states’. To corroborate his thoughts, he cited Article 1(1) of the Indian Constitution which declares: “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States”. Although this sentence is unquestionably a part of our Constitution, what seemed disturbing was his complete reluctance to acknowledge that the Constitution does not deny nationhood to India in any manner whatsoever. In fact, our Preamble establishes this point where it reads: “The objectives stated by the Preamble are to secure justice, liberty, equality to all citizens and promote fraternity to maintain the unity and integrity of the nation.” When questioned on this by one of the audience members, any proper reasoning behind his thoughts was found wanting. In a sincere attempt to gauge the logic behind such a staggering statement, we asked him a provocative question: “Mr Gandhi, are you ready to rename your party from Indian ‘National’ Congress to Indian ‘Union’ Congress?” To this, his instant response was that the former ‘sounds nice’ to him and hence there is ‘no need for renaming’.

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We were utterly perplexed by the shallowness of his replies and were left with the impression that Rahul Gandhi probably does not think through these complex issues and despite facing similar problems with appropriate responses for decades, has steadfastly made no attempt for improvement. There was also a point in the discussion where he referred to India as a ‘Voice’ and a ‘Conversation’, meaningless abstractions that only reinforce the persona of this gentleman who once famously said: “Poverty is just a state of mind”. These instances make me wonder where the Congress party’s ship is heading next with this amateur captain at the helm. Democratic process in India is under danger Rahul Gandhi raked up the ‘issue’ of the Central government’s control over media and social media platforms as well as that of the judiciary “not being independent anymore”. He also tangentially touched upon the supposed ‘unfairness’ of the electoral process in India, an unsubstantiated accusation raised merely to defend the abysmal performance of his party in national and several state elections since 2013. However, quite comically, could this be the same unfairness that launched his party to power in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh in 2018? Clearly, his party’s stance against hard facts in several civilisational and social empowerment issues can hardly be justified by blaming the legal system in India. Moreover, he conveniently overlooked the handful of mainstream media and social media channels that are still under the active control of Congress and its increasingly left ecosystem. [caption id=“attachment_10726431” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Congress MP Rahul Gandhi at the ‘Ideas for India’ conference in London. Twitter/@RahulGandhi[/caption] Such complaints are largely unfounded since it is but natural for the ruling party to desire influence in multiple sectors, a power-play that the Congress had perfected in its extended decades-long rule! Fielding a question on whether the Gandhi family should relinquish its power to see Congress bounce back, he said: “It’s for the party to decide”. Such blatant deflection of responsibility by the de facto President speaks volumes about his unwillingness to take ownership and seems to foreshadow the rapid drowning of his party from the Indian electoral arena. Policy decisions The former Congress president raised the issue of the sudden implementation of GST and emphasised that such policy decisions were not carried out by the BJP government with proper conversation. Here, Rahul Gandhi habitually failed to realise the existence of a due protocol, which in this case, is a GST Council where each decision to introduce new taxes or change existing tax brackets is taken after proper consultation with the finance ministers of all the states including those governed by Congress and other Opposition parties. He also criticised that Aadhaar, a concept pioneered by the previous UPA government, has now found supposed utility in undue governmental vigilance. It seems that Gandhi’s advisors have willingly ignored the reality of massive expansion of social welfare schemes around the country through the network of Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile (JAM). While conceptualising an idea of great magnitude is relatively simple, executing it on a scale as large as the Indian subcontinent is fraught with immense challenges which the current government has undoubtedly dealt with in an exemplary manner. This has been reflected in successive public mandates post-2014. Therefore, it is time that the royally deluded ‘Yuvraj’ starts touching base with the reality if at all he intends to steer Congress into a possible winning position in the near future. China question Finally, Gandhi also commented on the aggressive expansionist attitude of China and how India should react to these developments. In an indirect manner, he praised the China model which according to him is ‘promising prosperity to smaller nations in Asia and Africa by investing in their economies and generating wealth’. On the contrary, he blamed the Western (and hence the Indian) model which he believes is fixated on defence cooperation without offering any alternative to the Chinese model. Such advocacy, direct or indirect, is incredibly flawed and alarming as the current effects of Chinese dole in Sri Lanka and Pakistan show. It seemed very clear that Rahul Gandhi has a profound admiration for the Chinese model and one’s mind cannot help but wander into the time when photographic evidence of his clandestine meeting with the Chinese envoy amid the Doklam standoff emerged in 2017. This is yet another indication of his complete detachment from the public mood in India that manifests itself in successive electoral defeats for the Congress party. Did the ‘Prince’, in a bid to win back power, forget who his subjects are? To sum up, Rahul Gandhi’s interaction at Cambridge was an underwhelming attempt at ‘conversation’, heavily departed from the factual, substantial and well-researched event it should have been. The jury is still out on whether his explosive notions are carefully curated to pander to a specific section of the audience or they are true as empty and worthless as they seem at face value. In either case, it is indeed dangerous to select such a representative to speak on the past, present and future of the world’s largest democracy. Going forward, I urge the university to align better with its high standards and invite politicians that have a successful political track record to speak on complex issues over someone whose only claim to fame is being a ‘Gandhi’. Krishanu Dey is PhD student in Physics, University of Cambridge, while Shaoni Kar is DPhil student in Physics, University of Oxford. Views expressed are personal. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .