Full text of Rahul Gandhi's INDIA alliance speech on June 8
I would like to welcome all of you here today. Thank you for coming. Many years ago, I got into an argument with a very
I would like to welcome all of you here today. Thank you for coming. Many years ago, I got into an argument with a very good friend of mine. I told him what you are doing is unfair. And his answer to me was: The world is unfair, get used to it. It is not my place to answer any of the things that were said today about the Congress Party. It is my place to – like in the Shaiva tradition — swallow everything. The idea of the blue-necked One (Shiva) who drinks all the poison. Whatever more you want to say, whatever criticism you have of me or the Congress Party, we will accept it, and we will accept it happily with a smile on our face. Read Full Story We will try to make you happy, because our role is fundamentally different from yours. I do not say this with arrogance. Our role, as many of you have stated, is to unite all of you together with love and affection. I have been a MP of the Congress Party since 2004, when I fought my first election. Our party is fundamentally differently organised than all other parties in India and I say this with humility. Why? Because this party began as a resistance movement when modern India did not exist. Unlike all other political parties it was not built using the infrastructure and protection of the Indian state. The Congress Party is a Resistance movement protecting the idea that all Indians are Equal. We are fundamentally opposed to the vision of the RSS. We will die — we will die in the Congress Party — before we stand with or compromise with the BJP or the RSS. You will have to cut off our heads to make it happen. I know lakhs and lakhs of Congress workers in this country who will say: Cut off our heads, we will not bow before the RSS. I am sorry to say that there is confusion in this group. The confusion is that you — the SP, the TMC, the RJD, etc. believe that the political instruments you have used so far will still work.
These only worked when the Indian state provided a fair field for them to operate in. That field does not exist any more. The BJP controls the institutions of the state. The BJP controls the legal system. The BJP controls the bureaucracy. The BJP controls the intelligence agencies. The BJP even controls the Election Commission. I have many friends in the TMC. They were convinced that they were sweeping the election. I kept telling them: you are in dream land. I have seen what happens – I have seen it in Gujarat, I have seen it in Madhya Pradesh, I have seen it in Chhattisgarh, I have seen it in Haryana and Maharashtra. And yet many of you are still not convinced. The Congress Party is a party of resistance. It does not require the neutrality of the Indian state to operate. In fact, the more the institutions of the Indian state are throttled, the more aggressively the Congress Party will fight to defend the Constitution. All of us share the ideals of the Congress Party. What are those ideals? Satya, ahimsa and compassion. What is the main issue here? I have no interest in fighting you. I would have to be a madman to suddenly get up and say I am going to fight you because you are our allies, you are our friends, you are the people we love. Please understand: we won the last election in 2024. We did not lose the 2024 election. You ask why Nitish ji left — it was not because of me, not because of the Congress. And I will tell you that in the near future, even those few instruments that used to work will stop working, because the BJP and RSS are tightening their grip on the Indian state. The Congress Party faced this very same decision more than a hundred years ago. We were a political organisation before 1927. The day Gandhiji said we want independence, we became a Resistance movement. If political parties can’t function, what functions? Resistance functions. Resistance works. Wherever we resist, it works. I have seen it with my own eyes. I have walked 4,000 kilometres across this country — resistance works.
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