The Congress president Rahul Gandhi, in his first major foreign policy address since he took over the reins of the Congress at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, said on the Doklam issue that he did not have details of the conflict and hence he was not in a position to say how he would have handled the issue differently.
A report published in the The Times of India quoted Rahul as saying, “Doklam is not an isolated issue. It was a part of a sequence of events, it was a process. Prime Minister (read Narendra Modi) is episodic. He views Doklam as an event. If he was carefully watching the process, he could’ve stopped it.”
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The report further quoted him as saying, “The truth is the Chinese are still in Doklam today.” Further talking about China, the Congress president observed, “A similar transformation is happening in China. While ours is a more organic process, the Chinese methodology is a bit violent. China is rising and there are consequences of that rise in the world. India can play a balancing role and build a bridge that can make the world a safer place.”
“India specialises in reducing confrontation. The central principle for India is – when someone was asked ‘whether India leans left or right’, the answer was ‘India stands straight’. “Although we have a traditional link with the Chinese, with regards to the democratic structure we have more in common with European countries.”
Talking about the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise in Assam, the Gandhi scion said, “NRC (in Assam) was started by us. It was our idea. However, there is a serious issue in its implementation. There are a large number of people who are Indians and are not part of the (draft) NRC list.”
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