Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has said that the BJP and the RSS are “incapable” of looking at the future and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to drive the Indian car by only looking in the rearview mirror which will lead to “one accident after another.”
Rahul addressed a massive community event at the Javits Centre organised by the Indian Overseas Congress — USA on Sunday as he wrapped up his US visit that included trips to San Francisco and Washington DC. “Back home we have a problem, and I will tell you the problem. BJP and the RSS are incapable of looking at the future. They’re incapable. Unse aap kuch bhi poocho, woh peeche ki aur dekhte hain (You ask anything they look into the past),” he said.
He said that if you ask the BJP why a train accident happened, they will say the Congress did such and such thing 50 years ago, taking a swipe at the government following the Odisha train accident, one of the worst railway tragedies in the country.
Rahul said that if you ask the BJP why they removed the periodic table from the textbooks, they will refer to what the Congress party did 60 years ago. “Their immediate response” is to look back,” he said, adding that one cannot drive a car by looking only in the rearview mirror as that will only lead to “one accident after another.”
“That is the phenomenon of Narendra Modi ji. He is trying to drive the Indian car and he only looks in the rearview mirror. And then he does not understand why this car is crashing, not moving forward. And it’s the same idea with the BJP, with the RSS, all of them.”
He said that when a train accident happened when the Congress party was in power, it did not say “it is the fault of the British that the train has crashed. No. The Congress minister remember said it is my responsibility the train has crashed. I’m resigning,” Rahul said.
“There is a fight going on back home — a fight between two ideologies. One that we represent and the other of course that the BJP and the RSS represent. I think the simplest way to describe this fight is on one side you have Mahatma Gandhi and on the other side, you have Nathuram Godse,” the 52-year-old former Congress president said at the community event.
Referring to Mahatma Gandhi, the Congress leader said that on one side there is a “brave man”, “NRI like you. In fact, probably the most impactful NRI that India has had in many, many years. Humble man, a simple man, but a man who believed in the future, who believed in India, propagated non-violence and search for the truth. That’s the ideology that we follow. That’s the ideology that all of you follow in this room.
“And then on the other side, Nathuram Godse, violent, angry, unable to face the reality of his own life. He was angry, hateful, and frankly he was scared. At the heart, he was a coward.”