The Indian Constitution, which embodies the idea of equality and serves as a global asset, is under threat from the ruling BJP in India, said the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, at a school in Berlin last week.
On a tour of Germany, Gandhi spoke at the Hertie School in Berlin, a video of which was released by the Congress on Monday.
Alleging a “full-scale” assault by the BJP on the institutional framework that runs India, Gandhi said the ruling party was trying to use it as a tool for building its political power, which amounted to an attack on the global democratic system.
“What the BJP is proposing essentially is the elimination of the Constitution. Elimination of the idea of equality between states, elimination of the idea of equality between languages and religions, elimination of the idea of the central core of the Constitution, which is that every individual will have the same value,” he said.
Titled ‘Politics is the art of listening’, the video showed Gandhi addressing a school of students, saying the Opposition has to find ways to counter attacks on the democratic system and the “weaponisation” of the institutional framework while maintaining that his party was not fighting the BJP, but their “capture” of the institutional structure.
“We will deal with it, and we will create a method, a system of opposition resistance that will succeed. But, we’re not fighting the BJP. You have to understand that we’re fighting their capture of the Indian institutional structure,” he added.
On the topic of vote theft, Gandhi said he believed there is a “problem with the electoral machinery in India” and that the Congress had shown, with proof, that it had won the Haryana election.
“We actually don’t feel that the Maharashtra election was fair,” he said.
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Gandhi also attacked enforcement agencies like the CBI and the ED and said that the BJP viewed them as “belonging to them”.
“So they use it as a tool for building political power,” he alleged, adding, “Going by the number of cases that the ED and the CBI have against BJP people and against the opposition, one would find that most of them are political cases.”
“The second thing is that there is a wholesale capture of our institutional framework. There is a full-scale assault taking place on the institutional framework of our country,” he claimed.
Referring to history, the Congress leader said that while the Europeans struggled to build a European Union, India built an economic and political union in 1947, which was based on the Constitution.
“If you are going to have any conversation about democracy on the planet, you cannot ignore by far the largest and most complex democracy in the world. That is why I say Indian democracy is a global public good; it is not just an Indian asset, it is a global asset,” he stated.
Attacking the economic model of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gandhi accused PM Modi, the BJP and the RSS of having essentially picked the economic models of Manmohan Singh.
“What Mr. Modi is trying to do economically cannot go further... it is jammed,” he alleged.
On INDIA bloc and its equation with its allies, Gandhi said they stood united on their disagreement with the ideology of the RSS.
“All parties of the alliance do not agree with the basic ideology of the RSS... we are very much united on that question.” “We have tactical contests, and we will continue to have them. But you will see that when it comes to the opposition requiring unity, that happens every day in Parliament. We are very united, and we will contest the BJP on laws that we disagree with,” he added.
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