Rahul Gandhi’s speech at Cambridge University earlier this week drew the BJP’s ire as it was learnt that the Congress leader spoke of the “threat to democracy” in India and alleged that several politicians, including him, were under surveillance.
Gandhi made the remarks during a lecture at the Cambridge Judge Business School (Cambridge JBS) on “Learning to Listen in the 21st Century”. BJP national spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill tweeted, “Instead of introspecting on loss of 172 seats out of 180 in N East polls, loss of 50+ elections out of 54 under his command, Rahul Gandhi is busy crying wolf on foreign shores! RG Cambridge speech is Classic Case of ‘Naach Na Jaane, Aangan Tedaa’ or ‘Bad Workman blames his tools’.”
In Kashmir
“This is where the thing gets really interesting. So, we are going through all the states and Kashmir is insurgency prone. There is a lot of violence there … As I am entering Kashmir, the security guys come to me and say, ‘Look, you can’t walk in Kashmir. It is not a good idea.’ We are walking for three days, in the roughest districts, they said you can’t walk in Kashmir, it is a bad idea. I said, ‘Why can’t I walk in Kashmir?’ They are like, ‘Well, you will get hand grenades thrown at you.’ Now I am responsible for 120 people I am walking with. I said let me go and have a little word with them. So, I go and have a little word with them. I told them, ‘Look, they are telling us that hand grenades are going to get thrown at us.’ I was like, ‘Frankly I want to walk. If we get hand grenades, we get hand grenades.’ So, they were like, ‘We should all walk.’ So, we decided we are going to walk. And we started to walk and suddenly what starts to happen is that these Indian flags start coming out everywhere. The first day, we were told about 2,000 people were going to show up and 40,000 people showed up.
Militants looking at me
“So, we have been told we are going to be killed. And we are walking. And people are coming and one guy looks at me and he says, ‘Call me.’ So, I am like, ‘Come’ … And the security people have said, ‘Please don’t do this … please don’t call people, because it is putting everyone at risk.’ So, he comes and he starts walking next to me. So he says,Mr Gandhi, you have come here to listen to us.’ I am like, ‘yes’. He said, ‘That is interesting.’ He is like, ‘You really come here to listen to us.’ I am like, ‘yes’ and he is like good. And then he says, ‘You see those guys over there?’ And we are walking. I ask, ‘Who?’ He says, ‘Those boys over there.’ He is like, ‘They are militants.’ Now militants should normally kill me … In that environment, militants should kill me. He says they are there and they are looking at you. So, I look at them and they are giving me this sort of look and I am like, okay, Iam now in trouble because this guy has just told me this … They give me this look and I give them this look back and then we carry on. Nothing happens. Why I am telling you this is because they actually couldn’t do anything. They actually didn’t have the power to do anything even if they wanted to. Because I had come into that environment listening. And I had come into that environment completely with no violence in me at all. And a vast number of people were saying that. That to me was an indicator of listening and non-violence.”
On democracy in India
“Indian democracy is under pressure, is under attack. I am an Opposition leader in India and we are navigating that space. What is happening is that the institutional framework which is required for a democracy — Parliament, a free press, the judiciary — just the idea of mobilisation, just the idea of moving around … these are all getting constrained. So, we are facing an attack on the basic structure of Indian democracy.”
