India: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “strongman image” is “now India’s biggest weakness”, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said this morning as he sharpened his attack on the government in his latest video on the issues facing the country. “PM fabricated a fake strongman image to come to power. It was his biggest strength. It is now India’s biggest weakness,” Mr Gandhi, 50, wrote in a tweet as he shared a video message, referring to the recent clashes with China in Ladakh in which 20 Indian soldiers died in the line of duty.
In the nearly two-minute video, shared two days after the Congress leader said India will pay a “huge price because of the government’s cowardly actions”, Rahul Gandhi is heard talking about China’s “strategy to restructure the planet”.
“Chinese don’t do anything without thinking about a strategy. In their mind, they have mapped out a world and they are now trying to shape the world… that’s what the scale of what they are doing. That’s what Gwadar is, that’s what Belt and Road is. It’s the restructuring of the planet,” Gandhi said today.
“At the tactical level, they are trying to improve their position whether it’s
Galwan, whether it’s Demchok or whether it’s the Pangong Lake. They are disturbed by our highway, they want to make our highway redundant. And if they are thinking larger scale, they want to do something with Pakistan in Kashmir,” he added. The tensions between India and China cannot simply be defined as “a border issue”, Mr Gandhi is heard saying in the clip as he stresses: “It’s a border issue designed to put pressure on the Prime Minister and they are trying to attack his image.”
