Rahul Gandhi, son of Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi, said on Wednesday pressure from India’s Hindu nationalists was not the reason for her turning down the post of prime minister.
”She has fought for what she believed in and has won the battle. They abused her and she fights single-handedly and defeats them. And then you say that she buckled under pressure,” 33-year-old Rahul told reporters.
”She did not buckle but she defeated them,” he added.
He said his mother’s critics were unable to fathom why a politician could act so selflessly as to reject India’s top job and instead choose to work for the people.
”The problem here in our country is that politicians are [viewed] so low that everybody is cynical. But there are people in the world, and my mother is one of them, who can act in a way which is uncommon and rare,” he added.
During campaigning for the elections, in which Gandhi’s party pulled off a shock victory, the ruling Hindu nationalists led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had repeatedly raked up Sonia’s Italian origin to say she was unsuitable to be prime minister.
”The issue of foreign origin is only for the BJP and that too because they have no other issue,” he said.
”If the BJP had worked in the last five years, the Congress Party would not have come to power, nor could my mother have come near the post of prime minister. But it is a party which has given the country nothing,” said Gandhi, who was elected for the first time as an MP in the poll.
Rahul said neither he nor his sister had tried to dissuade their mother from accepting the post of prime minister due to security fears, but admitted that they did try to stop her from entering politics in 1998.
”If we had security fears, we would have locked her up in a room. But she is roaming about everywhere. I don’t know what it is. Maybe we are ignorant or something, but it does not enter into our heads,” he added.
”In 1998, when our mother entered politics, I and my sister were against it. That time my mother’s heart was set on saving the Congress, which was drying up because of the lack of a leader.” — Sapa-AFP