by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
London : Congress President Rahul Gandhi has once again compared the RSS with the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamist organisation, and said both were banned after the assassination of the top leaders of India and Egypt — Mahatma Gandhi and Anwar Sadat, respectively.
Speaking here on Saturday at an event organised by Indian Journalists’ Association, Gandhi said: “I said RSS is lot like the Muslim brotherhood. And there is a storm in a teacup back home. Both organisations were founded in the 1920s. Both organisations believe in institutional capture. Both organisations view the electoral process as a means of capturing institutions.”
“Muslim Brotherhood was banned after Anwar Sadat’s (then Egyptian president) assassination (in 1981), RSS was banned after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination (in 1948). So, there are tremendous similarities. And the most interesting one, women are not allowed in either of these organisations. So, they are similar,” Gandhi added.
He also said: They are trying to capture institutions so that democratic organisation is throttled,” he added.
Gandhi had on Friday compared the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) with the Muslim Brotherhood, and said the RSS wanted to “capture” every institution of the country.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
Rahul Gandhi has had another of his escape-velocity-of-Jupiter moments.
His reference to the massive gravitational force of the solar system’s largest planet was in the context of “explaining” how much velocity was required by a spacecraft to lift itself from the surface of Jupiter compared to what was required on earth — 60 km/sec against 11 km/sec.
According to him, this was the kind of stupendous “effort” which the Dalits needed to “escape” from their present lowly socio-economic conditions.
Following that foray into space science, the Congress president has now offered an economic “explanation” for the lynchings in India during a speech in Germany by arguing that the unemployment caused by demonetisation, which hit small businesses, is behind the mob violence.
Moreover, the traders and entrepreneurs have also experienced grave difficulties because of the “badly implemented” Goods and Services Tax (GST).
The link, however, between demonetisation and lynching is tenuous. For one thing, the people in general showed exemplary patience in lining up for hours before banks and ATMs after the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes were withdrawn from circulation.
For another, the cow-related lynchings of Muslims are widely believed to be the outcome of the atmosphere of hate created by the longstanding anti-minority propaganda of the saffron brotherhood, which has gained traction with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) assumption of power.
Demonetisation and GST have nothing to do with the attacks on Muslims for consuming beef or transporting cattle.
After this flawed interpretation of communal incidents, Rahul Gandhi ventured into another dicey area by linking the rise of the Islamic State in West Asia to the US intervention in Iraq and the resultant insurgency caused by the stalling of the “development process”.
If the Congress president’s point is that the absence of adequate economic opportunities for Muslims and Dalits can breed terrorism in India, he can only be said to be grossly exaggerating.
He had earlier acknowledged during a visit to the US that he is not as good a speaker as Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Now he has shown that his arguments are not always credible.
Little wonder that the BJP is cock-a-hoop with joy, for Rahul’s speech has reinforced, in its view, his Pappu image which he had been gradually shedding.
In the present highly charged political atmosphere, there is every need for public speakers to weigh their words with care lest the slightest slip enables their opponents to trip them up. No quarter is given at the moment, which is perhaps as it should be, for the age of gentlemanly parry and thrust in politics is over.
For Rahul Gandhi and the national opposition, there are any number of issues on which the BJP can be criticised. These include, among other things, the insecurity of the Muslims as a result of the lynchings and the perception among Dalits of being oppressed, which has been reinforced by the prolonged incarceration of one of their top-ranking leaders, Chandrashekhar Azad “Ravan”.
The fear among the Muslims and also peace-loving Hindus have also been heightened by the possibility of violence caused by various diktats of the Hindutva lobby such as banning animal slaughter on the occasion of Eid or the provocative shows of strength with the brandishing of arms by saffron groups during Navaratri which used to be earlier always observed peacefully.
Apart from these flashpoints, there are also the problems of unemployment and agrarian distress. There is no need, therefore, to range further afield by referring to the Islamic State, especially when the Muslim community in India has always shunned terrorism except for a few who have gone to Syria.
If anything is to be highlighted, it is this spirit of forbearance and tolerance for which the country has always been known rather than the possibility of deprivation leading to the adoption of extreme measures.
India is on the brink of a seminal change. The two opposing political forces facing each other — the BJP on one side and the Congress and the national opposition on the other — represent two virtually diametrically opposite “ideas” of India.
While one is avowedly Hindu-centric, the other emphasises the country’s composite culture.
As one of the leaders of the latter group, Rahul Gandhi has to demonstrate that he and his party are ready to put behind them the ignominious past of being able to win only 44 seats in the Lok Sabha and are ready to take on the BJP’s formidable election machinery and its highly articulate orator, Narendra Modi.
To do so, Rahul Gandhi has to choose his words with care whether speaking at home or abroad and concentrate on the BJP’s obvious weak points instead of looking for parallels from world events.
Since the BJP has the advantage of having a domineering “presidential” figure at its helm, it is keen on turning the next year’s general election into a one-to-one contest with Rahul Gandhi in mind since there is no other leader in the non-BJP camp with a pan-India appeal as his not inconsiderable 27 per cent approval rating compared to Modi’s much higher 49 per cent shows.
But to make it a battle of equals, Rahul Gandhi must not neglect his home work.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Economy, News, Politics
London : Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday compared the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) with the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamist organization, and said the RSS wanted to “capture” every institution of the country.
The RSS was trying to change the very nature of India, he alleged.
Rahul Gandhi was speaking at an event in London in the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS). Gandhi said: “We are fighting an organisation called the RSS, which is trying to change the nature of India. There is no other organisation in India that wants to capture India’s institutions,” he added.
Gandhi said: “What we are dealing with is a completely new idea. It is similar to the idea that exists in the Arab world in the form of Muslim Brotherhood. And the idea is that an ideology should run through every institutions, one idea should crush all other ideas.”
Citing a few examples, he said: “You see the response of four Supreme Court judges, who came out and said ‘we are not being allowed to do our work’. You see Raghuram Rajan (former RBI Governor) and the shock of demonetisation. You can see India’s institions being torn down one by one. That requires a response, a response that has to include all who value what India has achieved,” he said.
Gandhi said the decision on demonetisation bypassed every single institution. “Demonetisation was an attack on small and medium businesses, which is India’s real power,” he said.
“It took a week for economists to figure out what has been done (by demonetization). The RBI was not spoken to, the finance minister didn’t know of it. The cabinet was locked up. The idea came from the RSS directly,” he said.
On lessons learnt from the electoral defeat in 2014, Gandhi said: “That you have to listen, the leadership is about listening, leadership is about empathy. At a party level, I think there was a certain degree of arrogance that had crept into the Congress. So, never forget that the party is actually the people. That’s a lesson for every body in the Congress,” he added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Hamburg (Germany) : Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday made a strong attack on the Narendra Modi government by referring to incidents of lynching and attacks on Dalits, saying people in India were angry and the ruling alliance was weakening support structures meant for the weaker sections.
Speaking at the Bucerius Summer School here in Germany, Gandhi also attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over attacks on women, “lack of jobs,” demonetisation and “flawed” implementation of the Goods and Services Tax and said corporates were being favoured over the rights of the marginalised communities.
Gandhi, who later took questions from the audience, also referred to his hugging the prime minister during the debate in parliament on the no-confidence motion, saying certain “hateful remarks” made against him by Modi prompted him to do so but “he (Modi) didn’t like and was upset by it”.
Gandhi is in Germany as part of reach out to the NRI community ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha elections. He will also go to the United Kingdom.
The Congress leader accused Modi government of not being keen on benefiting all sections from transformation taking place due to urbanisation.
“They do not feel that every single person in India should have access to fruits of transformation. They feel that tribal communities, poor farmers, Dalit, should not get the same benefits as the elite of the country gets. We feel everybody took the risk, everybody should get the reward,” Gandhi said.
“The other thing they have done is they have started attacking the support structures that were designed to help certain groups of people,” he added.
Gandhi said welfare measures of UPA government such as the right to food and the right to guaranteed employment had been weakened and money going into these schemes “is going into the hands of very few people, the largest corporates in the country.”
Gandhi alleged that demonetisation carried out by Modi had taken away lakhs of jobs as it had destroyed cash flow of small and medium businesses.
“China produces 50,000 jobs every 24 hours, India only 450,” Gandhi said, adding that bad implementation of GST had let to closure of thousands of businesses.
“These things are what has made people in India angry. That is what you get to read in the newspaper. When you hear about lynchings in India, when you hear about attacks on Dalits in India, when you hear about attacks on minorities in India, that is the reason for it,” Gandhi said.
He said the transition that is shaping the world requires certain protection for people. “That protection is being taken away and India is reacting to that. It is very dangerous in 21st century to exclude people. If you do not give people a vision in the 21st century, somebody else will which is not going to be good. That is the real risk of excluding large number of people from our development processes,” he said.
Gandhi said hate is a dangerous thing in a connected world and it is a choice. “I can fight you, take you on. I can compete with you but hating you is something I have to actively chose to do.”
Gandhi said his main complaint with Modi is that India has jobs problem but he does not say it and asked how it will be fixed if it is not even acknowledged.
Gandhi said level of violence is increasing in India and “women were getting a huge share of it.” He called for a change in the attitude of Indian men at the way they treated women.
He said non-violence in India was a foundational philosophy of India’s nationhood and noted violence can only be fought by non-violence.
Referring to assassinations of his grandmother Indira Gandhi and his father Rajiv Gandhi, he said the only way to move forward after violence is forgiveness.
Answering a question on the US and China, Gandhi said India’s role will be to balance like that of Europe.
He said India’s actions will be guided by self-interest and noted that it is closer to the US than to China.
Referring to Modi coming to power in India and “certain style” of leaders coming to power in the US and some European countries, he said the reason was failure of jobs, particularly to non-white collar persons.
“We are outcompeted by Chinese. That is creating a lot of anger,” he said.
He also said India was not in a race with China but was wanted to develop according to its values.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Corporate Governance, News, Politics
Mumbai : Reliance Group Chairman Anil Ambani has written to Congress President Rahul Gandhi saying that the party has been “misinformed, misdirected and misled” by malicious vested interests and corporate rivals on the offsets related to the Rafale fighter jet deal.
A Reliance Infrastructure Ltd release said that Ambani wrote a letter to Gandhi last week and expressed “deep anguish over continued personal attacks” on him while terming all allegations as “baseless, ill-informed and unfortunate.”
Clarifying on the role of Reliance in offset exports/ work share, Ambani wrote that Rafale fighter jets are not being manufactured by Reliance or Dassault Reliance Joint Venture.
Ambani said Gandhi’s allegation that Reliance Defence was set up 10 days before the announcement on April 10 , 2015 of government’s decision to purchase 36 French-manufactured Rafale jets links factually incorrect information “and is thus irrelevant and completely false.”
“The Reliance Group announced its decision to enter the defence manufacturing sector in December 2014-January 2015, months before the intention for purchase of Rafale aircraft. In February 2015, we informed the Indian Stock Exchanges of the companies we have incorporated,” Ambani said.
The release said that all the 36 fighter jets are to be 100 per cent manufactured in France and exported from France to India.
Ambani clarified that not a single component worth a single rupee is to be manufactured by Reliance for these 36 Rafale jets.
“The allegations relating to `lack of experience’ are, thus, irrelevant,” the release said and added that there is no contract from the Defence Ministry to any Reliance Group company related to 36 Rafale aircraft.
Ambani said allegations of Reliance benefitting by thousands of crores was a “figment of imagination, promoted by vested interests” and put simply, “no contract exists with the Government of India ”
“Our role is limited to offset exports / export obligations. More than 100 medium, small and micro enterprises (MSMEs) will participate in this along with public sector undertakings like BEL and Defence Research & Development Organization (DRDO). This role strengthens Indian manufacturing capabilities and is in pursuance of the Offsets Policy introduced by the Congress-led UPA Government itself from 2005 onwards,” the release said.
Gandhi has been attacking the Modi government, alleging that the deal had caused a loss of Rs 41,000 crore to the exchequer compared to the price negotiated by the Congress-led UPA government. He has also making allegations about the offsets.
The party also said on Saturday that it will launch a month-long nationwide agitation from next week on what it said was “Rafale scam” of the Modi government and other issues.
—IANS
