Amid a massive row over Rahul Gandhi’s speech at Cambridge University, the Congress leader interacting with the Indian Journalists’ Association in London said he never insulted India on foreign soil. “There is nothing defaming India in my Cambridge lecture. last I recall the prime minister going abroad and announcing that there has been nothing done in the 70 years of Independence. I remember him saying that there is a lost decade of 10 years; there’s unlimited corruption in India. These are not things he said in India. These are things he said abroad,” Rahul Gandhi said.
“I have never defamed my country. Not interested in it and won’t do it ever. Of course, the BJP likes to twist my words. That’s fine. And the media likes to sort of play it up because of TRP. But the fact is the person who defames India when he goes abroad is the Prime Minister of India,” Rahul Gandhi said.
“You haven’t heard his speech where he said nothing happened in 70 years? Insulting every single Indian? Insulting every single Indian parent and grandparent. If that’s not an insult, what is? What about all these people who worked and built India in these 10 years which he said have been lost,” Rahul Gandhi said adding that a different narrative gets developed because there is money behind the narrative.
“There is Mr Adani and his billions of dollars behind the narrative. There is a transfer taking place. The narrative is built up and India’s wealth is given to Mr Adani. So that’s the exchange. But we don’t accept the transfer and hence there’s no narrative,” Rahul Gandhi said.
In his Cambridge speech, Rahul Gandhi said Indian democracy is under attack as the institutions including Judiciary, and media are attacked by the government. He said PM Modi is destroying the architecture of India and imposing ideas that India can’t absorb. Accusing the BJP government of surveilling the opposition leaders, Rahul Gandhi said his phone had Pegasus and he was told by intelligence officers that his calls were being tracked.
