On Tuesday, March 17, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took a swing at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration, saying that in the twenty-first century, electoral democracy can be “destroyed” if one has influence over social media and institutions, as well as a financial power.
Gandhi, slamming the Centre over claims that India’s democracy is weakening, said on Tuesday that Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, the dictators of Iraq and Libya, both won elections.
“Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi used to have elections. They used to be able to win them. It wasn’t like they weren’t voting but there was no institutional framework to protect that vote.”
In a virtual conversation with Brown University, Rahul Gandhi said.
An election is not simply people going and pressing a button on a voting machine. An election is about narrative. An election is about institutions that ensure that the country’s system is functioning properly, an election is about a fair judiciary, and an election is about a debate in parliament. So you need those things for a vote to count,” he said.
He made this remark in response to a question from Brown University’s Professor Ashutosh Varshney about reports by Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), a Swedish think tank, that downgraded India to an “electoral autocracy,” citing a decline in political freedoms and a Freedom House study that shifted India’s status from “free” to “partly free.”
The government has slammed the Freedom House report, calling it “misleading, wrong, and misplaced,” and claiming that the country has long-standing democratic traditions.
When asked about the downgrade, Mr. Gandhi said, “The situation in India is worse; we don’t need a stamp on that.”
When asked about calls for him to resign from the Congress leadership, he said he was defending a certain philosophy in the party and would not give up only because everyone else did not like it. He also said he would continue to combat the BJP’s ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whom he compared to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.
Asked if other legislative figures should become leaders, Gandhi said, “100 percent, absolutely. I am more than willing to inspire and help as many leaders as possible, and that is my track record…it is what I do all day. I push people and push them forward.”
The Congress leader said that he has been calling for polling in the party since the beginning and that he has been chastised in the press for his quest for elections.
