Congress youth icon Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday robustly answered back National Democratic Alliance leaders’ recent personal attacks on him in his most passionate and personal speeches yet in three crowded campaign meetings in Bihar, seeking to overturn the NDA’s charges that he was a political greenhorn.
“My experience in politics is only for five years, but I have understood India in these five years,” said Mr Gandhi at a Congress campaign meeting in Maoist-affected Jehanabad, where the fifth phase of Bihar’s Assembly polls is scheduled for November 9.
“When I go to villages, they mock at me, saying he is a child. What I had to understand, I did in the past five years,” the Congress general secretary added.
Asking the large, rapturous crowd to listen up, Mr Gandhi said: “I am not your leader, I am your servant. The day I forget this, you should ask me to go away”.
These statements were preceded by Mr Rahul Gandhi explaining to the crowd the meaning of the word “politician” as the public’s servant.
In what appears his answer to the NDA leaders’ frequent claims that he wants to be Prime Minister, Mr Gandhi said: “Now I am 40 years old, but I am not hankering after power. It may take ages to come. It makes no difference to me.” Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had advised Mr Gandhi just two days back that he should first become a chief minister before becoming Prime Minister.
Attacking the NDA’s previous “India Shining” slogan, Mr Rahul Gandhi said: “These big slogans in English are not politics. Politics means going to the people, understanding them, eating from their hands. I understand this. They may say I am a child or I am an elderly man, but I will not forget this lesson”. Pointing at the poverty and unemployment in Bihar, he said: “Like they (the NDA) earlier used to say India was shining, the same situation has started in Bihar now.”
“I am not here to play with your future. I am here to change Bihar’s future. The crowd here and the Congress party have that power. The Congress party belongs not to any state or community; it belongs to the whole nation,” said Mr Gandhi, who also spoke at Barbigha in Sheikhpura and Hisua in Nawada.