Rahul Gandhi was recently made to deliver a talk to MBA students at the Cambridge Judge Business School, on the topic ‘Learning to Listen in the 21st Century”. The talk was arranged by Congress leader Sam Pitroda. During his hour-long talk, Rahul Gandhi peddled his usual nonsensical ideas and false claims, and also some blatant lies, as he does in India during his political speeches.
He started by saying that he is going to speak about the politics in India, the two divergent forces in the current world, that are China and the USA and ‘we’ can think about them.
He spoke about ‘listening’ to the public, the political discourse and different cultures. He added that different cultures listen differently. He also added that the risks of different listening at an international level are enormous.
‘Indian democracy is under attack’, claims Rahul Gandhi
Being classic Rahul Gandhi and completely missing the irony that an Opposition leader from India has come abroad to address the students of a prominent university and no one has stopped him from doing so, Rahul Gandhi claimed that the democracy in India is under attack.
“The institutional framework required in a democracy, the parliament, the judiciary, free press etc are also under constraint, ” he said.
“The idea of mobilisation, the idea of just moving around, is under constraint. We are facing an attack n the basic structure of the Indian democracy”, Rahul Gandhi dropped another massive bomb of irony.
After completing a long walk called Bharat Jodo Yatra from Kerala to Kashmir and then travelling abroad to Cambridge, Rahul Gandhi claimed that the idea of moving around and mobilisation is under constraint in India.
India is a Union of States, multiple different states like Europe, says Rahul Gandhi and lies about getting ‘jailed’
Rahul Gandhi again peddled blatant lies, claiming that he and some other MPs were locked up and put inside jail for just speaking about certain issues. This has never happened. Rahul Gandhi has never been jailed.
“Here you can see that picture. This picture was taken in front of the parliament house. That’s where a whole bunch of opposition parliamentarians were just standing there and talking about certain issues. We were just locked up and put in jail. It happened relatively violently. It has happened 3-4 times.”
The picture that he showed to students at Cambridge was from the way to Hathras in 2020, where he and his sister Priyanka were stopped from going to a place that was under curfew, due to the threat of caste-related violence that was fanned by political parties (including Rahul’s Congress) over the strangulation of a girl.
So, Rahul Gandhi showed a picture of him being stopped from visiting a place under curfew in UP’s Yamuna Expressway and claimed that in that picture he was “jailed” by the police for speaking with fellow members of Parliament in front of the Parliament house in Delhi.
He has also claimed that it has happened 3-4 times, and violently.
In reality, while on the way to Hathras, Rahul was stopped by the police and was detained along with the political retinue for some time. His sister was not even detained but was escorted to a guest house to wait.
‘I had Pegasus on my phone, a large number of politicians had Pegasus in their phones’
Taking his lies to the next level, Rahul Gandhi next claimed that he had the Pegasus malware in his phone. He added that a large number of politicians had Pegasus on their phones. He even claimed that he was told by ‘intelligence officers’ that his calls are being recorded and he should be careful.
The fact is, no evidence of the Pegasus malware was found in a Supreme Court inquiry. Rahul Gandhi and many other politicians who claimed they were being snooped on and tried to raise a political controversy over it, never submitted their phones to the probe panel. Of the 29 phones that were submitted, only 5 were found to be infected with “some kind of malware” and none of them was confirmed to be Pegasus.
‘Cases on me are an attack on democracy’: Rahul Gandhi
Taking further his claims of an ‘attack on democracy’, Rahu Gandhi claimed he has criminal liable cases on him that should never have been criminal liable cases, conveniently forgetting that his family, which effectively ruled India for over 5 decades, is facing graft and corruption charges to the tunes of thousands of crores of rupees.
‘Started Bharat Jodo Yatra because it is very difficult to communicate with people’, says Rahul Gandhi
Rahul Gandhi, who has 22.9 million followers on Twitter alone, who addresses massive rallies of the Congress party and speaks in parliament, holds press conferences and heads a trust that owns a newspaper, claimed that due to the so-called ‘attack on democracy’ in India, it is very difficult for him to communicate with people and hence he had to undertake the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’.
he even compared the BJY to Gandhi’s Dandi March, drawing equivalence with the freedom struggle against the British, painting himself as carrying the legacy of Gandhi (they are not related), of fighting against tyranny.
While travelling in container trucks modified into ultra-luxury residences on wheels, equipped with all luxury amenities, and under VIP security, he went on to describe how the yatra was about facing difficulties and challenges.
‘Militants saw me in Kashmir, but they could not harm me’
Rahul Gandhi, who walks with dozen of commandoes, party leaders and supporters surrounding him, claimed that he walked very safely in Kashmir, even through the stretch in Pulwama where a “car bomb” killed 40 soldiers, and he saw two “militants” there. He went ahead to claim that the militants saw him but could not harm him, because he was promoting the idea of non-violence and peace.
Rahul Gandhi knows very well that the CRPF soldiers were killed by Islamic Terrorists, not ‘militants’ whom he tries to portray as mere separatists. The bomber had made his intentions very clear in his video, asserting that he is about to kill ‘cow urine drinking Hindus’, as a service for Islam. However, he has chosen to peddle subtle anti-India propaganda, trying to send a message that the ‘unrest’ and violence in Kashmir are due to ‘violence’ on the part of the Indian government and ‘not listening’ to people.
There are 2 aspects of this claim, whether it is true or false. The first is, Rahul Gandhi was able to walk safely in Kashmir, and had thousands of people joining him with Tricolours in their hands, because the Modi government has made it possible. The claims of public dissatisfaction and ‘Muslim atrocity’ and persecution peddled by the opposition and international media is false.
The second aspect is, Rahul Gandhi used subtle juxtaposition. He subtly posed himself and his walk “as opposed to the vehicles carrying CRPF soldiers”, and claimed he did not face any attack from the militants because he was sending a message of ‘non-violence’ and he had come there to listen and to talk to people. This is the subtle anti-India propaganda the Congress prince is peddling on an international platform.
‘Nobody checked my IDs in America, but my IDs were checked in India’
In a bizarre anecdote, Rahul Gandhi claimed that he was very happy and surprised to learn that in the (pre-9/11) USA, nobody checked IDs in airports. He added that while his IDs were checked in his own country, in the USA he could just walk in and board a plane. He added that the idea of a ‘safe’ USA was sadly challenged by Bin Laden.
The next parts of his speech were obscure philosophies about the idea of China and how it is different from the ideas of other nations, particularly the Western nations. He also indirectly endorsed the Chinses idea of not bothering to restrict themselves by Intellectual Property Rights laws and how they see that people who ‘invent’ things do not own them.