DM Monitoring
New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi has referred to caste as an “apartheid system” in India which the Congress MP said that he is “trying to change.”Gandhi made the comments in an interaction with students from Harvard University.
The video of the interaction was shared on his X account on Saturday (December 24).
“The big battle in India is actually the caste battle. So we are running almost from a caste perspective an apartheid system. So that’s what I am trying to change. Because the entire system is controlled by a very thin group,” he said.
Gandhi, along with members of the opposition INDIA alliance, has been demanding a nationwide caste census. In the recently concluded assembly elections in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana, the Congress had promised a caste census in its manifestos.
The party however, only won in Telangana and was voted out of power in the three Hindi heartland states.
The Congress has also promised to conduct such a survey if it is voted to power in the general election in 2024.
He has earlier pressed for the need for a caste census saying that it reveals the composition of OBC, Dalit and Adivasi communities in the country which will will open up a window for a “new development paradigm”.
He also said that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government was attempting to turn India into a nation with “one ideology, one religion and one language.”
“So they kill the negotiation, they try to capture the institutions. So that’s really the political fight in India right now,” he said.
“We feel if you end the negotiation in India, the conversation between the union India collapses, India tears itself apart.So you can see that Manipur is burning, you can see Jammu and Kashmir is burning. You can see Tamil Nadu has a problem. As somebody said to me the other day there’s a problem on the edges. And if you want to understand a system you got to look at the edges,” he said.
He also said that a “full scale civil war” is underway in Manipur.When asked about economic inequality in the country, Gandhi said that economic development is “massively concentrating” in the hands of a few.
“When you talk about economic development you have to ask the question in whose interest is that economic development.”
“Right next to the figure of growth in India, you have the figure of unemployment in India. So India’s growing, but the way it’s growing is by massively concentrating wealth towards very few people,” he said.
“Similar to the United States, we are operating on a debt sort of model and we are no longer producing. The real challenge in India is how do we set up a production economy that is able to give large numbers of people jobs.
We have two or three businesses that are pretty much entire business system. We have Mr [Gautam] Adani, everybody knows he is directly connected to the prime minister, he owns all our ports, airports, our infrastructure. With that kind of concentration, you will get growth but you will not get any distribution. And a country like India needs distribution,” he said.
When asked about why these inequalities are not reflecting in electoral outcomes, Gandhi said there is “massive mobilisation” but there is a requirement for an “infrastructure to fight an election”.
“You need a fair media, fair legal system, fair election commission, access to finance, institutions that are neutral. Imagine a United States where the IRS, the FBI, their full time job is destroying the lives of the opposition. So that’s the paradigm we’re in. I didn’t walk 4,000 kilometres because I like walking 4,000 kilometres. I walked 4,000 kilometres because there was no other way to get our message across.”
“Even my social media is fully capped. I’ve got a shadow ban 24/7. My Twitter’s under control, my YouTube is under control and I’m not alone, the entire opposition. I don’t think India is running a free and fair democracy anymore,” he said.
