Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi began his speech to INDIA bloc allies by recalling a conversation with a “friend”.
Without revealing the person's identity or explaining what had happened, Rahul Gandhi said he had told the friend that what he was doing was unfair.
The friend replied, “It is an unfair world; get used to it.” Rahul Gandhi then suggested that many allies in the INDIA bloc had yet to come to terms with that reality.
Invoking the Shaiva tradition, Rahul Gandhi said he had learnt to take criticism and humiliation directed at him and the Congress in his stride.
Stressing that he was not interested in fighting friends and allies, he said the Congress understood its responsibility to keep the INDIA bloc united and its partners together.
Drawing a parallel with Lord Shiva consuming poison, Gandhi said the Congress was willing to "swallow poison" — accepting criticism, attacks and humiliation from allies if that helped preserve opposition unity.
The allies, however, appeared to suffer from the ‘confusion’ that the old rules still applied, that they can fight the BJP on a level playing field, which has been taken away.
The challenge before the Opposition, therefore, was not how to win the next election.
In a fair election the BJP would lose anyway because of the pent-up anger among the people.
The challenge, however, was how to resist an unfair election.
Friends in the Trinamool Congress, he recalled, were confident that the party was sweeping the assembly election held last month.
He recalled telling them that they were living in a ‘dream land’.
Even now, he said, Mamata Ji and Uddhav Tackeray Ji are only 40 per cent certain that elections were stolen from them; Tejashwi Yadav too is 90 per cent sure that the election was manipulated in Bihar.
