‘Answer to abject surrender lies in grips, chokes placed on PM’

Update: 2026-02-20 19:23 GMT

New Delhi: Stepping up his attack on the government over the interim US trade deal, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said the answer to why Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed to a deal, where India gives so much and appears to get so little, and make an “abject surrender” lies in the “grips” and “chokes” placed on him.

The leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha also claimed that with this deal, India is going to become a “data colony”.

Gandhi, who has been attacking the BJP-led government and accusing it of a sell-out through the deal, posted a video on X in which he invoked his recent speech in Parliament in which he had drawn a Jiu-Jitsu analogy.

In his post on X, Gandhi said, “Why did I use a Jiu-Jitsu analogy in my Parliament speech on the trade deal? Why were our farmers sacrificed to please the Americans? Why was India’s energy security compromised by allowing the US to dictate our oil supplies?”

“Why agree to increase US imports by $100 billion a year without a reciprocal promise? Why did I say this deal could turn India into a data colony? Why would Modi ji agree to a deal where India gives so much and appears to get so little? The answer to this abject surrender lies in the “grips” and “chokes” placed on the PM.

In the video, Gandhi said a lot of people have asked him why he used a Jiu-Jitsu analogy in his Parliament speech.

“The reason I used the idea of a grip and a choke is because these exist in Jiu-Jitsu and how you control an opponent in that sport. But they also exist in the political realm. And in my experience of politics, I have seen political grips and political chokes are mostly hidden. The average person cannot see them,” he said.

“And you have to look carefully to see where the choke is being applied and where the grips are placed. So that was the idea behind using this. It expressed very powerfully what our prime minister is going through,” he said.

The LoP said that on the one hand is the criminal case against businessman Gautam Adani in the

US and on the other hand is the Epstein scandal.

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