New Delhi: In his first parliamentary speech after being elected to power for the third time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Tuesday hit back at the Congress and Rahul Gandhi — who he repeatedly referred to as “balak buddhi” — for allegedly hatching a conspiracy against Hinduism and trying to weaken the Army.
Modi’s two-and-a-half-hour reply to the Motion of Thanks on the President’s address in the Lok Sabha came a day after Rahul created a political firestorm by accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of spreading violence, hatred, and lies, which, he said, went against the basic tenets of Hinduism as advocated by Lord Shiva.
Launching a counter-attack on Rahul, Modi said there were attempts to humiliate Hindus in the Parliament Monday and that “this country will not forget (the same) for centuries”.
“People of the country will never forget what happened yesterday. It was said — Hindus are violent. Are these your values? Is this your character? Is this your hatred for Hindus in this country?” Modi questioned amid continuous sloganeering from opposition members throughout his over-two-hour speech.
“This country will not forget this for centuries,” he said, accusing the Congress and their allies of coining the phrase “Hindu terror” and comparing Hinduism with dengue and malaria. “Hindus will have to think if this (insult) was a sanyog (coincidence) or prayog (strategy),” the prime minister said.
Responding to Rahul’s allegations on the Centre’s Agnipath scheme, Modi said that lies are being spread about recruitment in the Army to stop the youth from joining the defence forces. “For whom does the Congress want to weaken the Army? For whose gain?” Modi asked, alluding to a larger conspiracy behind the Congress’s criticism of the Agnipath scheme.
Accusing the Congress and its “ecosystem” of hatching anti-national conspiracies, Modi vowed to destroy the ecosystem entirely.
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‘Rahul like a child who cries foul’
Even as the opposition members kept raising the slogan of “Justice for Manipur” throughout his speech, even entering the Well of the House in protest, the prime minister did not mention Manipur once.
On the nationwide protests over the NEET paper leak, Modi said, “I assure every student and youth in the country that the government is very serious about stopping this on a war footing.” The government, he added, is taking all the steps to ensure that those who play with students’ futures cannot go scot-free.
Taking swipe after swipe at Rahul, Modi repeatedly infantilised him by calling him “balak buddhi”. Drawing an analogy with a child who goes crying to his mother about being beaten up in school without revealing his mischiefs, Modi attacked Rahul as someone “who is out on bail in a scam of over Rs 1000 crore” and has been “convicted for referring to OBCs as thieves” in what was a recall of a criminal defamation case against Rahul for an attack on Modi, as well as someone who has cases against him for insulting V.D. Savarkar and calling the chief of the largest party in India a murderer in what was a reference to Rahul’s attack on Amit Shah.
“Today the whole country is telling (him) tumse na ho payega (you will not be able to do it),” Modi said, as he mocked the Congress for celebrating its farzi jeet (fake victory) of 99 seats as though it had won 99 of hundred seats, and not 543.
The people’s message for the Congress is to stay in the Opposition benches, he said. Post-2024, the Congress has become a “parasite” party, which eats into the votes of its allies, he added. Wherever there was a direct fight between the Congress and the BJP, the Congress had a strike rate of 26 percent. Meanwhile, in the constituencies where it contested as a junior partner with the support of one of its allies, its strike rate was 50 percent, he said.
In 13 states, the Congress won zero seats, said Modi. Yet, the party is celebrating the results as though to console a child, he further said, repeating his “balak buddhi” jibe at Rahul. “Balak buddhi ko kaun samjhaye tumne fail hone ka record bana diya hai?” he said, mocking the Congress for getting less than 100 seats (99) for a third consecutive time.
He, however, asked the speaker not to ignore the “balak buddhi” as just childlike since it spells danger for parliamentary democracy. “We will be unable to protect parliamentary democracy without seriously taking what happened yesterday. We should not ignore these acts by calling them childish, by considering them childish, we should not ignore them at all, and I am saying this because the intentions behind this are not good, and I also want to awaken the countrymen,” he said.
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‘Pulled India out of despondency’
Commending his government’s two terms, Modi said its biggest achievement has been to pull the country out of a state of constant despair and despondency it found itself in before 2014. The seven words iss desh ka kuch nahi ho sakta were omnipresent until 2014, and the confidence of Indians was at its lowest, he said. The 2014 election was a turning point, after which the collective mood of the country is that iss desh mein sab sambhav hai.
He also said that those “who dance around with the Constitution on their head” were only too happy not to apply the Constitution to Jammu and Kashmir until his government repealed Article 370. Now, stone-pelting in Jammu and Kashmir has stopped, democracy is being celebrated, and the Constitution is being hailed, he said.
Post-2014, the government response to terrorists, the ghar mein ghus ke marenge approach, reduced terrorist attacks compared to earlier times when the government remained mum over such attacks, he further said.
Modi also spoke about the Emergency, during which “all limits of cruelty” on the people of India were crossed for the greed of power. Turning around the Opposition’s allegations that the BJP wanted to get rid of reservation, Modi said the Congress has been anti-reservation since the times of Jawaharlal Nehru, because of whom, he said, Ambedkar resigned from the Cabinet. He also accused the Congress of belittling leaders such as Jagjivan Ram, Chaudhary Charan Singh, and Sitaram Kesri.
Modi concluded his speech by appealing to the INDIA alliance to work with his NDA government, especially in states where it is in power. “May balak budhhi also get wisdom,” he said.
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