Rahul says can take on BJP leaders without hating them
NEW DELHI: Indian politics is, by design, “confrontational” and “winner-takes-it-all,” the atmosphere in India is coloured by “hatred, anger and frustration,” but it is possible to fight the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) without “‘hating” them, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said on Wednesday.
He was speaking at the launch of senior journalist Karan Thapar’s memoir, Devil’s Advocate The Untold Story. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Gandhi launched the book.
Former vice-president Hamid Ansari, senior BJP leader LK Ad- vani, Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, Congress leaders Karan Singh, Ahmed Patel, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Shashi Tharoor, Digvijay Singh and Manish Tiw- ari, Akali Dal leader Naresh Gujral and other political, business and media figures were present.
“The atmosphere in India today is coloured with hatred, anger, frustration and politics. Us politicians, members of the government, tend to see the world as us or them. This is not my natural way. This is the design of our politics. It is confrontational and it is winner-takes-all,” said the Congress chief.
The Congress chief spoke of a visit to Vietnam, an encounter with a boatman who lost his mother to an American bomb and fought the US soldiers, but harboured no hatred for the Americans.
“You can fight someone with all your might but hate is an active choice you make. I might disagree with Advaniji, can have a different conception of the country, but I can hug him and fight,” Gandhi said, as Advani looked on.
In a reference to his hug of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Parliament on Friday, he said, “Whenever I co- me across BJP MPS, they take two steps back, thinking I may hug them. It is not such a bad thing.”
Gandhi credited veteran Congress leader Karan Singh for teaching him a lot about the country and his religion. “If there is one thing this religion teaches us, you cannot get imprisoned by hatred. We’ll fight them, but we don’t need to hate them. I don’t know if we can expect the same from them.”
Tharoor read excerpts from the book; Thapar engaged in a conversation with journalist Rajdeep Sardesai about the book.