Indian democracy under attack, politicians under surveillance: Rahul at Cambridge Univ lecture

PTI, Mar 3, 2023, 11:59 AM IST

Indian democracy is under threat, senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said during a lecture at Cambridge University, claiming that several politicians, including himself, are under surveillance.

Gandhi made the comments during his lecture on “Learning to Listen in the 21st Century”, which was shared on Twitter by Congress leader Sam Pitroda, ex-adviser to former prime minister Manmohan Singh.

Raking up the Pegasus snooping issue, Gandhi alleged that the Israeli spyware was installed on the phones of a large number of politicians, including him.

Gandhi also recollected incidents from his recently concluded 4,000-km Bharat Jodo Yatra across 12 states. Explaining the power of listening and non-violence, he narrated a ‘face-to-face encounter with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir’. Despite being warned by the security personnel of terrorist attacks, he continued the walk. An unknown man, who approached Rahul and asked him whether he had actually come to listen to the people of the valley, pointed to a group of ‘militants’ standing nearby.

“I looked at them and thought that I was in trouble…nothing happened, we just carried on…they did not have the power to do anything, even if they wanted to, because I came into that environment to listen, with no violence in me at all,” he said while showing pictures from the Congress-led yatra.

He added that The idea of Bharat Jodo was born out of the need to connect to people and draw attention to prejudice, unemployment and growing inequality in an increasingly stifled atmosphere, he added.