‘RSS ideology against India’s spirit’

Rahul also says that BJP has been replicating Cong’s successful initiatives

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, while continuing his tirade against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government, has said that the BJP has been promoting the RSS ideology which is against the spirit of India. He also criticised the government’s handling of the Pathankot airbase terrorist attack and said that a handful of people were running the nation, which is bad. Mr Gandhi, who was speaking during an interactive session with students of NMIMS College at Vile Parle, said that rather than introducing innovative measures, the BJP government was replicating the successful initiatives by the Congress.

Dressed in a t-shirt, jeans and sports shoes apparently in readiness for the padyatra from Bandra to Dharavi later in the day, Mr Gandhi arrived at the campus nearly 35 minutes after the scheduled time. Admitting to the delay, Mr Gandhi restricted his speech to 10 minutes and invited questions from his audience comprising management students dressed in formal wear, Congress leaders and invitees of the college management.

While replying to a question on censorship and intolerance, Mr Gandhi said that the BJP policy of identifying people on the basis of their religion was the root of all problems. “BJP identifies people as Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and not Indians. This is not what the Congress used to do, it treated everyone as Indians which was in line with the spirit of the nation. The BJP’s approach is detrimental to the growth of the country,” Mr Gandhi said.

To another question on whether politicians should be involved in sports, the Congress scion said that sports should be the prerogative of sportsmen and the different boards should be run by them rather than

politicians. With regards to the security threat to the country, he said that the country was being run by three to four individuals as a result of which the security of the nation was at risk. The Pathankot airbase incident shows how the BJP government is taking arbitrary decisions. Rather than roping in the proper agency to tackle the terrorist attack, the Modi government referred to the National Security Advisor rather than the National Security Guard, which specialises in formulating tactics.

When asked about his view on Indian educational institutions not being in the top 200 institutions in the world, Mr Gandhi said that he did not care for the rankings as the

so-called top institutions have a different approach than in India. He further added that as the BJP government was just replicating institutions rather than coming up with innovative ones, the Indian educational institutions would find it difficult to make a mark for themselves.

He concluded the interaction by apologising to the students for the security hassles they had to go through to attend the session.