Rahul Gandhi: Modi Undermining India’s Democratic Ideas, Minorities’ Freedom

A progenitor of India’s three past prime ministers (son of Rajiv Gandhi, grandson of Indira Gandhi, and great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru), Rahul Gandhi, is a former president of the Indian National Congress (Congress Party). In this encounter with THISDAY, he discusses the current political colouration in India, including his defamation conviction by the Gujarat Court. Beyond his potential ban from the parliament for six years), Gandhi appears to put the interests of millions of unheard Indians above any personal political ambition he might have. Unfortunately, a day after this interview was held, the 53-year-old politician lost his appeal but could still make his case right to the end: the Supreme Court.
Gandhi joined politics in 2004 and was elected to the Lok Sabha and reelected in 2009. He was named the Congress Party’s vice-president in 2013, becoming its president in late 2017 after his mother, Sonia Gandhi, stepped aside as the party’s leader. Gandhi looks forward to an India free from the stranglehold of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He describes his recent 4000-kilometre walk across India as a means to “connect with people and also as a person’s journey of understanding.” He talks more about the human essence, the intersection of politics, power, poverty and the people. Excerpts:  

Let’s start with your 4000-km march on foot. Mahatma Gandhi did march as well. What’s the significance of this? Were you taking people down memory lane or was there some other motive to the walk?

There were a number of motives and ideas behind the walk. The walk in India, across the country, is a tradition in my country. It has been done by many great leaders. All the way from people like Buddha, Guru Nanak — a large number of people — have used the walk to create an imagination, connect with people and also as a person’s journey of understanding.
So the idea, on the one hand, were the 21st-century issues like the media, fake news, and money playing a huge role in what people get to hear and see through the media. The idea was therefore, to go straight to the people and have a direct conversation and listen to them more than speak.
Normally, political people speak more and listen very little. Maybe 90 per cent speaking and only 10 per cent listening. But during the walk, it was a lot of listening, connecting with people through what they wanted to say. This gives you a real sense of what’s happening on the ground, and it creates a bridge with large masses of people. There were times when hundreds of thousands of people were walking with us.
It’s a way of connecting with people and building a new imagination for our country. The other one is a more personal aspect – introspection, suffering a little bit during these many months of the walk, understanding pain, more humility. These things come out of perseverance and long action. Overall, it was a very useful and powerful thing. It created an alternative imagination in our country.

Personally, what was the experience like?

A couple of things actually. One, it was surprising to me how different the narrative in the media was to the narrative on the ground. It was just completely different! So what people on the ground were asking for, commenting on and agitated about was not being reflected in the media at all, and this came as a huge surprise to me because I felt that the media was supposed to reflect what the people feel, but there is a complete disconnect.
So the biggest points raised by the people were anxiety by the level of anger and hatred being created between communities, price rises and massive unemployment.
And these were universal, from young people, middle-aged people, to women. They said, ‘Listen, we don’t like the anger, the hatred that is being spread around us. We are not able to find a job, and prices of everything are skyrocketing. Wealth is being concentrated in a few hands.’ And this was what the people were saying across the country, and the media was completely disconnected from this. This disconnect, I also see it as an opportunity to connect directly with people.
The second thing was about the power of listening. When we were walking, the numbers became so big that it wasn’t really possible to hold proper conversations. A sort of silence descended upon us. We were talking (about) a minimum amount. I was just listening to the people. And this was a very powerful exercise because a lot of the messages that came out of the walk were not our messages.

They were people’s messages that we were transmitting. And the final thing for me personally was that nothing is impossible. When we started, we didn’t know whether we would be able to finish the walk or not. But I would tell you that at the end of 4000km, it wasn’t a difficult thing to do. There was so much energy, so much enthusiasm. So it wasn’t difficult.
Those were the insights I gained. I think what would be relevant for the people of Nigeria is the disconnect between what the people are saying or feeling and the narrative that’s being created. And I think it’s a very powerful tool to listen to people directly. The language in the walk was one of love and affection. Anybody could come and walk with us.
Even our opponents could come. They could say things we liked or didn’t like. It was an open space, and my endeavour was to make sure that everyone who came into this space while we were walking was feeling comfortable, happy and going away knowing that we heard them.

Why do you think there is a disconnect between what the media report and the reality on the ground in India?

There are two things in India: complete control of the media by the government and a huge concentration of wealth in a few hands. So people who control the wealth control the media, and they are not interested in the narrative of the people. These two factors play a big role— pressure from the government., silencing journalists. So, there were many journalists who came to us and said, ‘Look, we want to write about this, but we are not allowed. We are stopped, threatened.’

India shares a lot of similarities with Nigeria. Do you think there can be a common solution to addressing such similarities, such as poverty, injustice, inequalities, and media independence?

I think opening direct channels for communication with people is a very powerful thing. So, the government tried to do everything they could to stop the conversation we were having in our walk. It was impossible for them to stop us. They have disqualified me. They have muted my microphone in the parliament. They don’t allow me to speak in parliament.
They can do that much, but they can’t silence me when I’m talking directly to people. It’s impossible. How do you do that? So one solution in this 21st century, you can go directly to the people, and there are tools that make it easier in some ways. Social media, even though controlled, can be used as an effective tool.
On the Nigerian-Indian similarities, yes, there are many, many commonalities which you will understand, and we will understand, that the people in the West may not understand. Reality is that they have not dealt with the type of things we have dealt with for many years. The powerful thing about India is the scale of what we do.

So, whatever happens in India happens on a very big scale, and there are many different models of doing what we do. That can be interesting for Nigerian people to come and see the different ways in which we are tackling problems in each one of our states. I think a conversation between the people of Nigeria and India, exchange between students — because I know broadly what you are facing, even though  I don’t know in detail.
 You know broadly what we are facing, but you also don’t know in detail. So there are many things which can be learnt and exchanged. For example, we have come out with a guaranteed employment scheme. It’s a very powerful idea. We have come out with five guarantees in the state of Karnataka (where the Congress party has recently won elections).

In Rajasthan, we have cutting-edge public policy work in healthcare, probably amongst the finest in the world. We also have a new law which we are bringing into place for GIG workers – you know, people who drive Ubers, or deliver food, etc. —  we are thinking of social security and pensions for them, so there’s a lot of cutting-edge work that we are doing, and I’m sure there’s similar work that you are doing.

It’s relatable when you talk about poverty because it’s prevalent in Nigeria too. Some people believe the march was to launch your campaign to challenge the PM (Narendra Modi) in the next elections. Is there any truth to that?

No. The idea behind the walk was that it was open for anybody to come and walk with us, and one of the things that we insisted on was that it would be non-political in nature. So, the architecture of the walk was such that it was not just the congress party. It was open to anybody. And if we had made the walk about politics or about the PM, then the walk wouldn’t have been powerful. The walk was about India and not about politics.

Earlier, you said you were silenced in the parliament. But a court also convicted you. How did that go with you?

I think the entire problem was triggered because of our walk. Let me tell you something, one of the problems we were facing was that we couldn’t get our message across to the people through the normal channels like media and social media. And when we did the walk, we suddenly found an instrument of communication, and it was a much more effective and powerful instrument than we imagined. It became a symbol of this power and captured the imagination of the people.
 That’s when the government decided that I had to be silenced, so the first attempt was to stop the walk, but they physically couldn’t do it because it had too much energy. So right after the walk, I had a speech in the parliament on the corruption of the PM and the day I gave that speech, all the cases were expedited, and I would like to tell you that I’m the first person in the history of India to get the maximum punishment for criminal defamation.
So nobody has ever got the type of punishment that I got. So the government came under tremendous pressure because of the walk and the issues that I was raising in parliament.

Do you have faith in India’s legal system, and do you think India is becoming less and less tolerant?

I wouldn’t say that India is becoming less tolerant. I would say that the government of India is becoming less and less tolerant — the people of India are naturally tolerant by nature, but the conversation in India is being stifled by the government. Frankly, my journey is one of understanding, supporting, protecting democracy in India, so it doesn’t really matter to me whether I am disqualified or not. My work remains the same. I will continue to do my work.

If the higher courts uphold the disqualification, what options would you have? How confident are you to get justice?

The case is a sub-judice matter, so it won’t be proper for me to comment on the court, but I would wait and see the ruling of the court.

Talking about the present Prime Minister, what would another term of his leadership mean for India?

I think it is going to be very difficult for the PM to win another term. There is large-scale anger against the government among the Indian people, and that anger is building. You’ve already seen how the BJP has been decimated in Karnataka, and we have another three or four elections (that) are coming in the next two or three months, and you will see that they will suffer the same fate in those elections because there’s an undercurrent that’s building up.
Of course, they have control of (the) institutional framework and the agencies and structures of the government, and they use those against the opposition. That’s a fact. So we are not fighting just a political party. We are fighting instruments of the Indian state which are being misused by one political party in power. The thing that Mr. Modi is doing, which is very dangerous, is curbing the conversation between the people of India. India is a union of states.

It’s a conversation between its people, and curbing that conversation, destroying and attacking the democratic framework, is very dangerous for India itself, so that’s the risk that we are facing. That the conversation between the states is not destroyed. And that conversation takes place through the institutional framework, so if you destroy this framework, then you destroy the conversation. And you can see that it’s being destroyed as we speak.
Some weeks ago, you were in the US, where you said, ‘Modern India cannot exist without our constitution and our democracy.’ Does this mean that the current government is undermining democracy — and you just mentioned that it’s a dangerous trend? Is that a correct interpretation?
Absolutely! India is a union of states, a conversation between millions of people. If you disturb the conversation, if you destroy the architecture of that conversation which is the constitution (and) our institutions, then you are creating a vulnerability for India as a whole.

 PM Modi has been accused of not protecting the rights of minorities and their religious freedom, especially Muslims. What is your view and that of your party regarding such freedom?

I think my view is that all communities, religions, languages, all their rights should be protected. We feel everyone in India should have a space to express themselves and the space to build a future for themselves. That’s our position. It’s true that the PM and his party are attacking the minority community, but it is also true that they are attacking the so-called lower castes, the tribes, (and) different languages.
They are attacking multiple ideas in India. They want to impose one idea on top of India, and what we are saying is that India is actually (a nation with) many different languages, religions, communities, and castes. There should be space for all these flowers in the bouquet of India.

Will you say that the Manipur crisis is a metaphor for the conundrum that India is currently grappling with?

Absolutely! It is a metaphor for the consequences of the politics of the PM, which is that instead of listening, supporting the conversation, you silence the conversation. India has many languages, cultures, perspectives, (and) religions. It’s very important that all of them are able to express themselves.

 Do you think the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi is ancient, or can it still connect with the people?

Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas have a very old foundation in India. His ideas come from a very ancient tradition in India. People like Buddha, Mahavir, Guru Nanak, Narayana guru, (and) Basavanna — all said things — to Mahatma Gandhi, and the essence of what they all said was that you have to work from a foundation of truth, non-violence, love and affection.
These are critical ideas in the 21st century because if we don’t use these ideas, there are levels of unimaginable violence that can happen. So these are not ancient ideas. These are very, very powerful and relevant ideas for the present and future. And these ideas are ingrained much deeper in the Indian psyche than being simply the ideas of one person. Mahatma Gandhi was an expression of these ideas. Our freedom movement was an expression of the same ideas.
President Mandela too used these principles in South Africa. In fact, a lot of the freedom movements in Africa used these principles, and these are not even just Indian principles. They are human principles. I’m sure, in your culture and tradition, you also have a tradition of truth, non-violence and compassion. Every culture has it.

The current British PM is of Indian descent. What do you think this adds to India?

This is an interesting question. I think he would have certain Indian values and traditions that would be helpful in England. It also reflects on our community in England and what they have been able to achieve in the UK. It’s a symbol of the way the Indian community has behaved and evolved in the UK. Of course, it is, in a sense, a positive thing for India — a bridge between the UK and India.

What do you think is the connection between PM Modi and India’s most powerful business players?
There’s a very good connection. Very close connection. PM Modi is essentially concentrating wealth in India in the hands of very few people at the cost of a vast majority of people, so the relationship is very good, and he has full support from three-quarters of the largest crony capitalists who control the media.
It’s a model of government – huge concentration of wealth, control of the information systems, control of the institutional framework, frightening and pressurising the opposition, essentially extracting wealth from a large mass of the Indian people. It is something which has been done in other countries before and is still being done in some countries.

 Now, you’ve done the march across the country. You’ve been meeting people. What’s your message for the Indian people ahead of the elections next year?

Number one: we have to defend the democratic system of our country. We have to restart the conversation among our people. Number two: we have to come out with a solution to the manufacturing issue. We have to start producing more and more, and we have to compete with China on production and manufacturing.
Number three: we have to make sure that wealth is distributed better and is not concentrated in one or two hands. Distributing wealth and having a clear-cut strategy on manufacturing and production are the only two ways out of the unemployment crisis that India is facing, and finally: we have to have a support system that protects our people in terms of education, healthcare and a basic minimum income. These are the things we believe in.
India is a country that has had conflicts with Pakistan and perhaps China. What would you propose as solutions?
With regards to Pakistan, their support for terrorism in India historically has been a huge problem. And will remain a problem until they stop doing this. With regards to China, we are in competition with them. We have a democratic vision. They have a less democratic, and a more autocratic vision.
So there are tensions and pressures. But we don’t believe there should be a conflict. We believe there should be peaceful competition between China and India. China has, of course, occupied our territory and is currently sitting on Indian territory, which is not acceptable to us at all.