Rahul Gandhi Says "Fear Of PM" Gone, BJP Reacts

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi tore into the BJP and its ideological parent RSS in public addresses in Dallas in the US. The BJP has reacted sharply to the remarks, saying that Mr Gandhi has a habit of insulting India.

The Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha spoke on wide-ranging issues in his interactions with students at the University of Texas and in an address to members of the Indian diaspora. Rahul Gandhi said the people lost their fear of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP after the party failed to get a majority on its own in the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

"The other thing that happened was that the fear of the BJP vanished," Gandhi said. "We saw that immediately, within minutes of the election result, nobody in India was scared of the BJP or the Prime Minister of India," he added.

Gandhi also underscored the ideological differences between the BJP’s parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and his party. "The RSS believes that India is one idea, and we believe that India is a multiplicity of ideas," Gandhi said.

He explained that his vision of India includes participation from people of all backgrounds—regardless of caste, religion, language, or tradition. "This is the fight, and the fight was crystallized in the election when millions of people in India clearly understood that the Prime Minister of India was attacking the Constitution of India," he stated.

Rahul Gandhi's remarks have drawn strong remarks from the BJP, saying that he goes abroad only to defame India.

Union Minister and BJP leader Giriraj Singh said, “To know about RSS, Rahul Gandhi will have to take many births. A traitor cannot know RSS.” He will not be able to understand RSS in this birth. RSS is born from the values ​​and culture of India, he added. While BJP national spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari said that Rahul Gandhi is "eager to bat for China".