Last Update: February 17, 2023, 14:51 IST
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addresses supporters during the Bharat Jodo Yatra, near Red Fort, in Delhi on December 24. (Image: PTI)
The jury is out on whether an MP or politician has the right to speak against his own country in foreign countries. According to the Congress, when PM Modi travels abroad, he leaves no stone unturned to attack the Congress or former prime ministers like Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.
Rahul Gandhi is on a foreign tour. The former Congress president is on his way back to his alma mater Cambridge to address a symposium and talk on a range of issues, including China and democracy. It is quite possible that Gandhi may be making a reference to the Adani issue and the fact that comments from several Congress leaders have been deleted.
Gandhi’s visit comes just after the end of the first phase of his ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’. This comes amid several editorials and even comments from British entrepreneur George Soros, who suggest that the Adani controversy “will lead to democratic resurgence and even change electoral trends”.
While his visit is expected to be fireworks, this is not the first time that Gandhi’s foreign trip has been controversial and embarrassed the party, while also giving ammunition to the BJP.
The most recent one was in May 2022 when Gandhi met known India Batter and Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who, among many other things, questioned the status of Jammu and Kashmir as an integral part of India. It was at the Cambridge Seminar on the topic ‘India at 75’. Another controversy arose at that time that Rahul Gandhi, unlike his co-traveller RJD MP Manoj Jha, did not take the mandatory government clearance. This was rejected by the Congress, which said that an MP does not need any approval.
In 2018, during a visit to Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Gandhi courted another controversy and was attacked by the BJP for tarnishing his country’s reputation abroad.
The Congress leader said: “There is a special kind of politics that is happening not only in India but in many places – of dividing people, using their anger to win elections and that is what is happening in India.” He further said that unlike Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he is loved even by those who dislike him.
In August 2018, Gandhi compared the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to the terrorist organization Muslim Brotherhood. “The idea of the RSS is similar to the idea of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world,” he told the London-based think tank International Institute of Strategic Studies.
At Berkeley in 2017, Gandhi said Dalits and Muslims were being shot in India. “This is new in India, it damages the idea of India,” he said. Many more controversial comments followed, such as when he said violence against women was on the rise in the country or when Gandhi said at a German university in 2018 that China was expanding and flourishing, unlike India.
The jury is out on whether an MP or politician has the right to speak against his own country in foreign countries. According to the Congress, when PM Modi travels abroad, he leaves no stone unturned to attack the Congress or former prime ministers like Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.
“As a prime minister, it is even more unacceptable. Rahul Gandhi It’s just being a true politician and showing the mirror,” say some Congressmen.
Meanwhile, the BJP is eyeing Gandhi’s impending visit to Cambridge, which is drawing closer to the Parliament session. If he stirs up any controversy, the BJP hopes to use it to counter the narrative being run by Gandhi and the Congress against PM Modi and the BJP.
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