NEW DELHI: Since 2023, the BJP has repeatedly accused the Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition of standing against “national interests”. This week, after Gandhi claimed that the Congress was fighting the “Indian state itself”, the criticism sharpened further.
The BJP’s response to Rahul Gandhi’s statement that the Congress was fighting “the BJP, the RSS, and the Indian state itself” marks a pattern in its framing of the Lok Sabha Leader of the Opposition and the Congress.
For the past two years, the BJP has repeatedly targeted Gandhi by painting him as someone standing against national interests. The argument has been that Gandhi was allegedly harmful to national interests because of his links to “foreign elements conspiring against India”.
Some of the points of the BJP’s attack are that he speaks ill of the country abroad; is associated with organisations linked to billionaire philanthropist George Soros; and that he is under the influence of the radical Left.
On Wednesday, addressing party leaders after the inauguration of the Congress’s new headquarters Gandhi said, “Do not think that we are fighting a fair fight… The BJP and the RSS have captured every single institution of our country. We are now fighting the BJP, the RSS and the Indian state itself.”
“I compliment Rahul Gandhi for saying clearly what the nation knows – that he is fighting the Indian state! It is not a secret that Mr. Gandhi and his ecosystem have close links with Urban Naxals and the Deep State who want to defame, demean and discredit India,” Nadda posted even as his Cabinet colleagues Nirmala Sitharaman, the Union Finance Minister, and Dharmendra Pradhan, the Education Minister, joined in.
A day later, BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla said short-seller Hindenburg Research, which had levelled allegations of malpractices against the Adani Group and is now shutting down, was the Congress leader’s “international alliance partner”.
Poonawalla alleged that the organisation, along with Gandhi, was looking to damage the Indian economy. Former Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also alleged that the “Hindenburg shop” was shutting down as the position of George Soros, its “funder”, had “weakened” in the US.
A senior BJP leader who did not wish to be named alleged that the Congress has been “captured by the Left”. “Rahul Gandhi’s statements call for no other response than to attack him on these lines (that he is against India). When he says he is fighting the Indian state, it clearly shows that he is under the influence of the radical Left, which has a habit of criticising the state,” he said.
The leader alleged that the Congress had “promoted the Left” since the late 1960s and that with the ideology’s decline in the last decade, many of its leaders have “entered the Congress and have become the eyes and ears of the Gandhis”. “So, while the structure of the Congress is tottering, the Left has captured its mind,” said the leader.
Ignoring these attacks, the Congress continued to target the RSS.
Shrinate, the Congress social media and digital platforms chairperson, said now that “the BJP has been cornered” it was “hiding behind the term state”.
“What wrong has Rahul Gandhi said? He is absolutely right … Our fight is with the entire system; with the state which is under the control of the entire Sangh Parivar; with an autocratic government. Foolish BJP members do not know the difference between ‘nation’ and ‘state’. ‘State’ is the useless government, corrupt bureaucrats, agencies full of Sanghis…,” she said.
In December 2024, the BJP fielded Puri MP and party spokesperson Sambit Patra to accuse Gandhi of being part of a “dangerous triad” of which Soros and some American agencies were a part. Patra then demanded an investigation into the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a global network of investigative journalists, which he accused of planting stories against India.
“I have no hesitation in saying that he is a traitor of the highest order,” Patra said at the time. The same day, the BJP posted on social media, “The connection between George Soros and the Nehru-Gandhi family runs deep, extending beyond Sonia Gandhi’s role as co-president of the Forum of Democratic Leaders – Asia Pacific (FDL-AP). Fori Nehru, a Hungarian like Soros, was married to B K Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru’s cousin, making her the aunt of Rahul Gandhi. Soros is documented to have visited Fori Nehru and maintained extended correspondence with her.”
The same month, the BJP also seized on an investigation by Mediapart, a digital newspaper, into the OCCRP that showed that both the American government and Soros were its funders.
The BJP alleged that the OCCRP’s coverage of the Adani row, the Pegasus surveillance app, and Brazil’s 2021 suspension of the import of Covaxin were immediately followed by Gandhi and the Congress raising the same issues.
However, other media outlets also raised the same issue and the Congress had taken up the Pegasus issue before the OCCRP reported on it. At the time, Mediapart also condemned the “instrumentalisation” of its report on the OCCRP by the BJP to further its political agenda.
At the time, the Congress rejected the charges and said these were aimed at diverting attention from a US court’s look into the bribery charges against the Adani group.
When Gandhi attacked the RSS on a trip to the US in September 2024, Union Minister Giriraj Singh labelled him a “traitor”, accusing him of going abroad only to defame India.
Last August, when Hindenburg Research accused SEBI chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch of having stakes in obscure offshore entities related to the Adani Group, Ravi Shankar Prasad alleged: “… The Hindenburg report is released on Saturday, there is uproar on Sunday, so the capital market is destabilised on Monday.”
In 2023, when Gandhi told British parliamentarians that debate was being stifled in India, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, in the Lok Sabha, accused Gandhi “of insulting India abroad” and demanded an apology.
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