Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday launched a sharp attack on the Congress in the Rajya Sabha, quoting a speech by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, saying that she and her father Jawaharlal Nehru had described the citizens of the country as a “problem”. Responding to the debate on the motion of thanks on the President’s address in the Rajya Sabha, PM Modi also indirectly targeted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
He said the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance’s way of looking at a situation or the way it thinks about solving a problem is very different from the way the Congress thinks. He said, “Whether it is BJP or NDA, there is a huge difference in our and Congress’s approach of looking at any situation and finding solutions to the problems. We believe that 140 crore citizens are capable of facing the challenges. We have full faith in the citizens and their abilities. This is the real strength of democracy. But Congress is giving an opportunity to the citizens.” The problem admits.”
Prime Minister Modi asked, “I want to explain by giving an example what he thought about the countrymen. I want to tell about what Nehruji and Indiraji thought about the countrymen. Once Indiraji went to Iran, there she was giving a speech. In her speech, she mentioned her conversation with Nehruji. She said, ‘When someone asked my father (Nehru) how many problems he had, my father replied 35. Crore.’ At that time the population of our country was 35 crores. Nehruji saw the countrymen as a problem. Can there be such a leader?”.
He said that giving this example, Indira Gandhi had said in her speech that “Today the population of the country is 57 crores and the number of problems facing me is also in the same proportion”.
“Dad considered 35 crore citizens as a problem, whereas she considered 57 crore citizens as a problem. Can there be someone who considers his own citizens as a problem? This is the difference between his and our way of thinking, his and our approach,” she said amid the sound of ruling party members thumping their tables.
According to a compilation of Indira Gandhi’s speeches, she said that nothing is simple or small in India and when asked how many problems she had, “My father once replied ’35 crores’, which was our population at that time. Now the population is 57 crores, so the scope of my problems is so big.”
Taking a dig at the Congress, PM Modi said a significant part of the government’s energy was being spent on correcting the mistakes of the past. “Inspired by the mantra of ‘reform, perform, transform’, we have moved ahead, and today’s reality is that the nation has boarded the reform express,” he said. PM Modi also referred to Rahul Gandhi’s comments on Union Minister Ravneet Singh.
“What happened yesterday – the ‘Yuvraj’ of the Congress, who has a ‘vicious mind’, called an MP of the House a ‘traitor’. His ego is at its peak. He did not call anyone else who left the Congress a traitor. But he called that MP a traitor, just because he is a Sikh. This is an insult to the Sikhs, an insult to the Gurus,” he said.
“This is an expression of the hatred towards Sikhs in the Congress… He is a member of a family that sacrificed its life for the country. Just because he changed his political ideology, does he become a traitor? This is not a small word. How can the country tolerate a citizen being called a traitor?… This is extremely unfortunate. Such people will sink the Congress,” he said.
