Fear of PM Modi and BJP has faded: Rahul in US

NEW DELHI: Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, said on Monday that the fear of the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has faded among the people since the recent Lok Sabha election results.

Addressing the Indian diaspora in Dallas, Texas, as part of his three-day tour of the US, the Congress leader said that in his first speech in the Parliament after the polls, he made a mention of Abhayamudra, a symbol of fearlessness present in all Indian religions. He claimed that the BJP could not tolerate or understand this.

“The other thing that happened was that the fear of the BJP vanished. We saw that immediately, within minutes of the election result, nobody in India was scared of the BJP or the Prime Minister of India. So these are huge achievements, not of Rahul Gandhi or the Congress party. We are peripheral. These are huge achievements of the people of India who realised democracy,”

he said.

He also said that the BJP’s parent organisation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), believes “India is one idea, while his party believes India is a multiplicity of ideas”.

“We believe that everybody should be allowed to participate, allowed to dream and should be given space regardless of their caste, language, religion, tradition or history,” Gandhi said.

On his Bharat Jodo Yatra that traversed over 400km-long journey spanning several states, Rahul said it completely changed how he viewed politics, people and the way to communicate with people.

“There were many people involved in the Yatra and all of us… and to me, the most powerful thing that happened organically on its own… we didn’t actually do it, it just happened that we introduced certainly for the first time in India. The idea of love in politics is a strange thing because you look at the political discourse in most countries and you will never find the word ‘love’ in that discourse. The ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ actually introduced that idea into the Indian political system,” he said.