It was an otherwise boring Sunday till senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi got up on stage and started speaking. He was addressing the ‘Mehangai Hatao Rally in Jaipur, Rajasthan. Rahul Gandhi got up on stage there and spouted such pearls of wisdom that can give any standup comic a run for their money, at least the ones who still manage to not have their shows cancelled.

We, at Satyaagrah, listened to it fully so you don’t have to.

He starts off with a lot of philosophy and says that two ‘jeevs’ cannot have one ‘aatma’. He then asks the rhetorical question to the stunned audience whether two lives can have same soul. When he did not get an answer, he answered it himself and said how two words don’t have the same meaning. After a lot of buildup, he said that the two words he was speaking about ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hindutvawadi’.

The rally was to protest against inflation and high prices, but somehow, Rahul Gandhi thought this was the perfect time to talk about Hindu and Hindutva.

He then asserted that he is a Hindu but he is not a Hindutvawadi.

At about 6:40 minutes into the video Rahul Gandhi decides to explain difference between Hindus and Hindutvawadi. “Mahatma Gandhi: Hindu. Godse: Hindutvawadi. What is the difference? I will tell the difference. No matter what happens, Hindu searches for truth. He would die, get beheaded, but Hindu will search for truth. His path is ‘Satyagraha’. He spends entire life looking for truth. Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography is ‘My Experiments With Truth’. He spent his entire life searching for truth and in the end, one Hindutvawadi shot him thrice in his chest,” he said.

At around 10:50, Rahul Gandhi proclaims that this country, India is of Hindus and not of Hindutvawadis. “If there is inflation and pain in this country, it is because of Hindutvawadis,” he claims. “The rule is of Hindutvawadis, not Hindus. And once again we have to get rid of these Hindutvawadis and bring back the rule of Hindus. Who Hindus? The one who hugs everyone. Who Hindu? The one who is not afraid of anyone. Who is Hindu? The one who respects all religions. He is Hindu. Read our shastras. Read Ramayan, Mahabharat, Geeta, Upnishad. Tell me where is it written that a weak person needs to be suppressed,” he said as his mother Sonia Gandhi clapped wildly from the stage.

He then cites the Geeta and claims that it is written in the Geeta that one must fight the fight of truth, “Die, get killed, fight the fight for truth. In Geeta, Lord Krishna didn’t tell Arjun to kill his brothers for power. Krishna asked Arjun to kill his brothers for truth.” Except, this is not what Shri Krishna told Arjun. When Arjun was in a dilemma to fight his guru and his cousins, Shri Krishna asked him to fight for Dharma and perform his duty to establish the rule of Dharma. Dharma, not ‘Satya’ as Rahul Gandhi claimed. Perhaps he should revisit the Hindu sacred texts.

 At around 19 minutes into the video, Rahul Gandhi talks about how PM Modi ‘stabbed the chest of farmers’. “And brothers and sister, he did not do it from the front, he did it from the back,” Rahul Gandhi says as he moved around the stage to show explain how a ‘chaaku’ was put in ‘chest’ of farmers’ through the back.

Chest, for normal human anatomy, is portion between neck and abdomen and the ‘chest’ Rahul Gandhi was showing is normally referred to as back.

“Why did he do this? Because he is Hindutvawadi. Hindus, if they stab, they stab from the front, Hindutvawadis stab from the back,” he said.

“China’s army will come and take away 1000 kms of land and Prime Minister will say no one has come within India,” he said. Rahul Gandhi had made similar claims back in October 2020 that Chinese forces had intruded 1200 kms into Indian territory. If one believes Rahul Gandhi’s statements of China occupying nearly 1,200 km of Indian lands, then according to him, at least half of Indian territories would be under Chinese occupation.

If one calculates the distance from the Line of Actual Control (LAC) near Ladakh – the epicentre of the recent clashes, the 1,200 km span would include states and union territories such as Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttarakhand, UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and parts of Gujarat, Chattisgarh, West Bengal and Jharkhand. The approximate areas that will be under China’s control as per Rahul Gandhi have been shown in the map below, where the distance of 1200 km from Ladakh has been estimated using the ruler feature of Google Earth.

India map with 1200 km radius

But Rahul Gandhi does have a complicated relationship with facts and figures.

Rahul Gandhi again went on the Adani-Ambani rhetoric and said how PM Modi gives away everything for free to Adani and Ambani. “Not their fault, because it is PM who gives them away things for free. But this is not how country is run. Country belongs to the poor, the labourers, the small shop owners, small business owners. As they generate employment. Adani and Ambani will not give jobs,” he claimed.

Adani Group employs over 23,000 people while Reliance group employs over 2,30,000 people directly. This eventually leads to further employment opportunities for thousands of people who work on various projects and offer services to these companies. It is shocking that this statement needs to be dignified with a response and explanation.

Earlier in the day, his sister Priyanka Gandhi, too, had addressed a rally, which was largely inconsequential and not as entertaining.

References:

opindia.com - OpIndia Staff