Team India
NEW DELHI: Rahul Gandhi (47) on Saturday took over as the new Congress President with much fanfare, dancing and bursting of crackers by the party workers, vowing to turn the Congress as India’s “grand old and young party” to defeat the politics of anger and hatred practised by the BJP.
His message to the party was never to buckle down, back down when the Congress is attacked but stand up to them “and their anger and hatred makes all of us stronger.” He exhorted to “never back down from promise to our country and our beloved people, our commitment to India’s past, its present and its future.”
Sonia Gandhi (71), who was a bit upset over the crackers straining her vocal chord until they were stopped, said it would not be suitable for her to praise own son, but she will certainly say that “I am proud of his endurance and firmness and I am confident he will lead the party with a pure heart, patience and devotion.”
“While from his very childhood, he has borne the experience of violence, the savage personal attacks he has confronted since entering politics have served to make him a brave and strong-hearted man,” she said.
She did not touch upon her retirement she broached on Friday, but told the Congress leaders’ gathering at the AICC headquarters to crown Rahul that “as all of you go forward on your new path, I will be there to rejoice in your achievements” with wisdom, high principles and great traditions of forbears. She wished them to “fulfill the hopes and aspirations of crores of our youth.”
Rahul said he entered politics 13 years ago watching the generation before him fight the structures of oppression, but those in power in India today are shaped by the very structures that keep India poor.
He left no doubt that he has to take on Prime Minister Modi at every step as he said: “The Congress took India into the 21st century while the Prime Minister is taking up backwards, to a medieval past where people are butchered because of who they are, beaten up for what they believe and killed for what they eat.”
Rahul said he has to fight with the vision that “belongs to a time where people did not have the rights and freedoms that have made our country the profound entity it is — a time when people did not have voice, did not have the right to dissent, to disagree to differ, to be.”
He regretted that politics (by Modi government) is not being used in the service of the people.
“It is being used to crush them, not to lift them.” He pointed out that the moment you announce to stand for the poor and challenge the power structure, you are attacked and hit from all fronts and lie and distort.
“We fight for those who cannot fight alone…. We consider the BJP (members) our brothers and sisters, even though we do not agree with them. They want a Congress-Mukt Bharat (India free of Congress), they want to erase us, but the Congress policy of inclusion and respect for all Indians extend even to the BJP. We do not fight hate with hate,” Rahul underlined.
“The Congress has met and will always meet our challenges and struggles with love and affection. They crush voice, we allow the most vulnerable to sing. They defame, we respect and defend. They might control the structures of power, the machinery of silence and fear but, we in the Congress, we are the bastion of the people. It is in this service that my idealism, your idealism and our hope for politics always rests,” he added.
There was an atmosphere of big celebrations all around the AICC headquarters and at Rahul’s residence. Half of the invitees, including senior party leaders, could not enter the crowded party headquarters to attend the function while one group even started a “havan” puja right in front of the main gate. Rahul’s sister Priyanka Gandhi attended the function along with her husband Robert Vadra.
The function was organised to let Rahul formally take over as the party president. The party’s central election authority chief Mullappally Ramachandran presented him a framed certificate of his unanimous election. Even before the function, the nameplate of Sonia Gandhi as the president was replaced with that of Rahul in the main building.
