New Delhi, September 11 (IANS). Congress MP and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi is currently on a US tour. Here, during an interview in Washington DC on Tuesday, he said, “I don’t think PM Modi has handled China well at all.”
Rahul Gandhi said that the world is changing rapidly. China’s power has increased tremendously. China is our neighbour and we have relations with the United States. So we are right in the middle of all this geopolitical change.
Do you think PM Modi has handled the US-China competition well? In response to this question, Rahul Gandhi said, ‘Well, if you call keeping Chinese troops in 4,000 square kilometers of our territory as handling something well, then we might have kept Chinese troops occupying land the size of Delhi in Ladakh.
‘I think it is a disaster. How will the US react if a neighbour occupies 4,000 square kilometres of your territory? Will any president be able to get away with saying he handled it well? So I don’t think PM Modi has handled China well at all. I think there is no reason for Chinese troops to be sitting in our territory.’
The main question is how do you challenge China on production and value addition? China’s strength comes from its production capacity. It is booming because Americans are buying Chinese products and Indians are buying Chinese products. I can certainly speak about India that it cannot grow without involving a large number of people and creating jobs for them.
Rahul Gandhi said that we are not like Singapore, where we can focus on services and expect everything to be fine. We need a solution and that solution will come from production. We need a long-term strategic vision. It should not be just one tactical move after another. From our point of view, the central elements of that vision should be democratic ideas – peace, non-violence, cooperation and harmony – the values for which our freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi fought.
However, to do this properly you need to have a very good understanding of who you are and what your own nature is. When you imagine yourself to be something that you are not, that is when problems arise. India is a very plural country, an open country. India is not just one idea. India is multi-minded. When you imagine yourself to be something that you are not, that is when all your strategic problems begin, he said.
The Congress leader said that we are weakening our biggest strategic asset, India’s democracy. It is not just India’s asset but it is a global asset because it is very important. It is being attacked in India.
—IANS
SM/FZ