Friday, July 24, 2026
ADVT 
India

In Germany, Rahul Gandhi Blames Unemployment For Lynchings

IANS, 23 Aug, 2018 12:57 PM
    In his address in Germany's Hamburg, Rahul Gandhi traced the creation of ISIS to warn against a similar situation at home if people are excluded from the development process.
     
     
    Congress president Rahul Gandhi claimed that the incidents of lynching in India were due to "anger" emanating from joblessness and "destruction" of small businesses due to demonetisation and the "poorly implemented" GST by the ruling BJP.
     
     
    In his address in Hamburg, Germany, Mr Gandhi traced the creation of ISIS to warn against a similar situation at home if people are excluded from the development process.
     
     
    "It is very dangerous in the 21st century to exclude people. If you don't give people a vision in the 21st century somebody else will give them one.
     
     
    "And that's the real risk of excluding large number of people from our development processes," he said, accusing the BJP government of excluding tribals, Dalits and minorities from the development process.
     
     
    Asserting that the transformation taking place in the world requires certain protection for people, he accused the current dispensation in India of taking these protections away from them and hitting the informal economy through demonetisation and GST, causing anger which is leading to lynching incidents.
     
     
    "They (the BJP government) feel that tribal communities, poor farmers, lower caste people, minorities shouldn't get the same benefits as the elite," the Congress president alleged.
     
     
    Mr Gandhi claimed that the other thing the BJP has done is that they have started attacking the support structures created to help certain groups of people.
     
     
    "That's not the only damage they've done. There's something much more dangerous," he said.
     
     
    He alleged that a couple of years back Prime Minister Narendra Modi "demonetised the Indian economy and destroyed the cash flow" of all small and medium businesses rendering millions jobless. 
     
     
    "They imposed a badly conceptualised GST which complicated lives further," Mr Gandhi said.
     
     
    "Large numbers of people who worked in small businesses were forced back to the villages and these three things that the government has done has made India angry.
     
     
    "And that's what you get to read in the newspapers. When you hear about lynchings, when you hear about attacks on Dalits in India, when you hear about attacks on minorities in India, that's the reason for it," Mr Gandhi said.
     
     
    He said that some of his own party members did not like it when he hugged PM Modi in Parliament.
     
     
    Mr Gandhi also said there is a big job problem in India but the prime minister refuses to see it.
     
     
    "You have to (first) accept the problem, to fix it," he said.
     
     
    Mr Gandhi also spoke about India and its progress over the last 70 years.
     
     
    Referring to his famous hug, after a no-holds-barred attack during a Parliament debate last month, Mr Gandhi said, "When I hugged PM Modi in Parliament, some within my party did not like it."
     
     
    The Congress president also talked about his father, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's assailants.
     
     
    "When I saw the man who killed my father lying dead in a field in Sri Lanka, I did not like it, I saw his crying children in him," he said.
     
     
    Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Velupillai Prabhakaran, responsible for the killing of Rajiv Gandhi, was shot dead by Sri Lankan troops in 2009.

    MORE India ARTICLES

    5 Priests Suspended From Kerala Church For 'Sexual Exploitation'

    5 Priests Suspended From Kerala Church For 'Sexual Exploitation'
    Five Kerala priests of the Kottayam-headquartered Malankara Orthodox Church have been suspended over allegations of sexually exploiting a woman from the same church, an official said.

    5 Priests Suspended From Kerala Church For 'Sexual Exploitation'

    Mob Beats Ahmedabad Woman To Death Suspecting Her To Be Child Kidnapper

    Mob Beats Ahmedabad Woman To Death Suspecting Her To Be Child Kidnapper
    Policemen from a nearby police station rushed to the spot and rescued the women, inspector Rathva said, adding that Ms Shantiben died at the civil hospital.

    Mob Beats Ahmedabad Woman To Death Suspecting Her To Be Child Kidnapper

    Doesn't Understand No: Focus On Stalking After Army Officer Wife Murder

    Doesn't Understand No: Focus On Stalking After Army Officer Wife Murder
    Stalking is an outcome of a sense of male entitlement that a woman cannot refuse them, said secretary of All India Progressive Women's Association Kavita Krishnan.

    Doesn't Understand No: Focus On Stalking After Army Officer Wife Murder

    Now, Apply For Passport From Anywhere In India

    External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj also launched a mobile application that would have the facilities for applying, paying and scheduling appointments for acquiring a passport.

    Now, Apply For Passport From Anywhere In India

    Angry Passengers Hold Up Train For An Hour, Get Toilets Cleaned

    Angry Passengers Hold Up Train For An Hour, Get Toilets Cleaned
    Around 100 passengers held up the Mumbai-Katra Swaraj Superfast Express at the Ambala Cantt railway station for nearly an hour as they were angry over unclean coaches and dirty toilets in the train.

    Angry Passengers Hold Up Train For An Hour, Get Toilets Cleaned

    Kerala Man Alleges Priests Sexually Abused Wife; Church Orders Probe

    The man from Pathanamthitta district alleged that some priests allegedly used his wife's secret confession to blackmail her.

    Kerala Man Alleges Priests Sexually Abused Wife; Church Orders Probe