“Their fear disappeared within minutes of the election results being announced”

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday remarked that fear of the Bharatiya Janata Party vanished “within minutes” of the outcome of this year's Lok Sabha elections. Gandhi made the statement during his first interaction with the Indian diaspora in Dallas, USA, after becoming the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha in June this year.

In his address to the Indian-American community in Texas, Gandhi also attacked the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, saying it believes that India is an idea. “We believe that India is a multitude of ideas,” he said. “We believe that everyone should be allowed to participate and dream and should be given space, irrespective of their caste, language, religion, tradition or history,” he added.

The MP from Raebareli said that it was a battle between two ideologies that emerged in the elections when “millions of people in India clearly understood that the Indian Prime Minister was attacking the Indian Constitution.”

#REGARD | Texas, USA: Lok Sabha and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi says, “The RSS believes that India is an idea and we believe that India is a multitude of ideas. We believe that everyone should be allowed to participate and dream and should be given space regardless… pic.twitter.com/uHULrGwa6X

— ANI (@ANI) 9 September 2024

“They said the BJP was attacking our tradition, our language, our states, our history. But above all, they understood that anyone who attacks the Indian Constitution is also attacking our religious tradition,” he said.

In his first speech to Parliament after being elected LoP this year, Gandhi mentioned the ‘Abhaymudra’ and said it was a symbol of fearlessness present in every single Indian religion and that the BJP could not understand it.

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Speaking about the Lok Sabha elections, in which the BJP failed to win a majority on its own after two consecutive terms, Gandhi said the “fear of the BJP has disappeared”. “We saw that immediately, within minutes of the election result being announced, no one in India was afraid of the BJP or the Indian Prime Minister,” he said.