'Opposition's fight rooted in truth, non-violence': Rahul Gandhi at Hyderabad Bharat Summit

Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said Saturday that India's Opposition, which was in crisis for a decade, had already faced its most difficult test and overcame it with the aid of love, truth and non-violence.

Speaking at the second edition of Hyderabad's Bharat Summit, a platform backed by the Congress party, on Saturday, he said: "When we were faced with the most difficult test, and I can tell you already with confidence that we are going to defeat Mr. (Narendra) Modi, we are going to get rid of Mr Modi. And you can see it on our streets, you can see it in Delhi, and you can see it in the fear that the Prime Minister and (Home Minister) Amit Shah have. This is already a done deal."

Earlier, Gandhi had begun his speech by talking about the fascist turn in the world and stated that in 2014, the country witnessed something it had never seen before. "A completely new election, something we have never seen before. Millions of dollars injected into the political system, a completely new mode of campaign. A drama such as we had never seen before. Electoral system which is used to close fights, coalitions were suddenly upturned...and I wouldn't be lying if I said that the opposition was in shock. We were in shock not for a year, not for two but for a decade...So there was this crisis in Indian politics for a decade, and then suddenly we discovered what was happening..." Gandhi said, adding that the Opposition realised that "democracy was destroyed in India in 2014".

Repeating his claim that legitimate voters had been deleted from electoral rolls in India in the recent past, Gandhi said that 140 million people who voted in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were "declared either non-existent voters or non-voters". "The question arises, if the election commission can declare 13 percent of voters as illegal after the 2024 elections, how is that election possibly legitimate?"

He cited an example from Maharashtra, where the Congress coalition had swept the Lok Sabha polls but was decimated three months later in the Assembly elections. "We start looking into the details of what we would find. We find that we get the exact same votes in both the elections. But seven million new voters are magically added in three months, and everyone of those seven million voters vote for the BJP, and they win the election," Gandhi alleged.

Indian democracy, he said, was a global asset because of its size and complexity, and was a global public good.

"It's important for the democratic movement of the planet to make India remain democratic. But what is indeed found and proven is that India is no longer a democracy," he said, adding that the economic structure the country was proud of had collapsed.

The economic model that worked for us and for many other people in other countries on the planet had failed, he said.

"It no longer works, and it will never work," Gandhi said, adding that the collapse had created a huge liquidity crisis that devastated the country's political system.

Gandhi argued that the economic collapse had also enabled the concentration of wealth and the growing convergence of political and business interests.

"Today we have a businessman in this country; before the BJP came to power, he was the 600th richest man in the world. Some months ago, he became the second richest man in the world, by the fusion of politics and business," Gandhi said. "The line between business and politics, between Mr Adani and Mr Modi, has evaporated. It doesn't exist anymore," Gandhi said, adding that Adani had "captured" huge assets in the country, even as the BJP's assets had grown 11-fold in a decade.

The Congress party's counterattack to fascism was its people's connection through the walk from Kanyakumari to Kashmir (Bharat Jodo Yatra), he said. The Congress continues to use the vocabulary of love and compassion in its politics because it believes that what worked against the fascists was "truth and non-violence", he claimed.

"We had never really used it politically because we never needed it...We found the two political weapons that he used - Satya and Ahimsa. We realised that under the circumstances, these were the most powerful weapons that worked," Gandhi said, adding that "lies, anger, hatred, violence, fear did not work. Love worked, truth worked, non-violence worked".

Rahul Gandhi apologised to those delegates who were allegedly not allowed into the country for the Bharat Summit by the Government of India. "It gives you a sense of what we are dealing with in our country," Gandhi said.

"The world is divided into two sections of people - a small minority who believe they are God and the vast majority are curious." Gandhi said that the small minority is "called fascists in politics" who tend to make a lot of noise, drowning out the listening majority. "The fascists tend to have a louder voice. Historically, the fascists jump out of the woodwork when systems and structures collapse," he said.

Earlier in the day, Rahul Gandhi released the Telangana Platform-Based Gig Workers' Rules, announcing that the state government would provide gig workers with Rs 5 lakh in life insurance cover and Rs 10 lakh in health insurance cover. He also held a bike rally with gig and platform workers.