Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in an interaction with journalists in London on Saturday said the BBC incident is just an example of the suppression of voice in India. “It’s sort of similar to Mr Adani…sort of also a colonial hangover,” Rahul Gandhi said as he was asked to comment on the BBC documentary row. “Every place where there is opposition, there is an excuse. The idea behind the yatra was an expression of voice and there is suppression of voice across the country. An example is the BBC. BBC is just one element of it. The BBC has found out about it now, but it’s been going on in India for thelast 9 years non-stop. Journalists are threatened and attacked. It’s part of a pattern. I wouldn’t expect anything different. If the BBC stops writing against the government, everything will go back to normal. This is the new idea of India. BJP wants India to be silent,” Rahul Gandhi said. They want to silence the population while they hand the country’s wealth to their friends, Rahul Gandhi said.
But is silencing the media new, Rahul Gandhi was asked. “Absolutely.It has never been done at the scale it is being done. There were periods of aberration but this is a full-scale attack on Indian institutions never seen before in modern India,” Rahul Gandhi said.
Talking about Bharat Jodo Yatra, Rahul Gandhi said BJP too took out a yatra called Rath Yatra and there was a rath in the middle, symbolising a king. “Our yatra was very different. There was no rath, no talking down to people. It was an embracing of people. It became necessary because the structure of democracy is under brutal attack and we were finding it very difficult to put our voice and the voice of the people through normal channels,” Rahul Gandhi said.
On a specific question about billionaire George Soros who said the Adani issue will “significantly weaken Modi’s stranglehold…and push for much-needed institutional reforms’, Rahul Gandhi said, “George Soros might have his view. I am not interested in that view. I see with my own eyes what’s going on in India. I can see that Mr Adani has gone from being the 609th richest man to the 2nd richest man in a matter of three years. I can see that he is rewarded across the board. I can see he is allowed to dominate industries. We don’t need Mr George Soros to tell us that. We can clearly see that happening. And he’s got a very good relationship with the prime minister.