I have been in politics now for nineteen years, and I have never experienced what I experienced in Manipur: Rahul Gandhi

Kalpetta:  Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Saturday that the ordeal of the people of Manipur has been haunting him ever since he visited the violence inflicted state a few weeks ago. Mr Gandhi was speaking in his first public function in Wayanad, after the Supreme Court stayed his conviction by a Gujarat Court in a defamation case and he was reinstated in the Lok Sabha. Rahul Gandhi was convicted for two years, the maximum sentence for a defamation case which led to his disqualification from the Lok Sabha.

Here is the text of his speech in Wayand: Some time back, I went to Manipur. I have been in politics now for nineteen years, and I have never experienced what I experienced in Manipur. I have been during floods, during violence. I went to the violence-effected areas in Uttar Pradesh, I have seen the tsunami. I have been all across our country during times of tragedy but what I saw in Manipur, I have never seen before.

You are my family. So, I think it is important that I tell you what I saw. I can’t tell you about all the people I spoke to, but I will give you two examples, examples that I will never forget and examples that are disturbing me right now as I recount them. Both of them involve Manipuri women… two different experiences of Manipuri women and these are women I spoke to in the relief camps.

One of the women, when I entered the room, was lying on the floor alone. Everybody else in the room had some family member, but I noticed this lady lying alone. So, I asked her – where is your family? She said to me – I have no family left, and then I asked her – what happened to you? For some time, she could not answer, she kept quiet, she didn’t say anything. Then I held her hand and I asked her – tell me what happened to you? And she said to me – I was sleeping in my village, and I was sleeping in my house with my little son. My son was killed in front of my eyes. They shot him right in front of my eyes, and then I spent the whole night lying next to my son’s corpse.

My son died in my arms and I did not know whether I should stay with my son’s dead body or I should run away and save myself. After some time, I decided that my son was not going to come back. So, I should leave. She described how she escaped… how she was shot at. And all this time, she was shaking while talking to me. Now imagine, if something like that happens to your mother or to your sister or the women who are here…. imagine if that happens to you that your son is murdered in front of your eyes. I asked her – what do you have with you? She says – my house was burnt. I lost everything I had. I said- you must have saved something. She says – I only have the clothes I am wearing. And then I said- but you must have carried something else with you, maybe some belongings or something. Then suddenly she started searching around where she was sitting and she pulled out a little picture of her son and said – this is the only thing I have left in my life.

The same story but told by another women… again I went into the camp…. and you have to understand that in these camps, I am giving you two examples but there are thousands and thousands of people who have suffered this. Somebody’s house has been burnt, somebody’s brother has been killed, somebody’s sister has been raped, somebody’s parents have been murdered. It is as if somebody threw kerosene all across Manipur and set it on fire.

So, I met the other lady I want to talk about… and I asked her – what happened to you? And the moment I asked what happened to her, she went silent. I could see that she was seeing the images of her experience and I was imagining how I would feel if this happened to my mother or to my sister and then suddenly, she could not bear what she saw in her mind and she fell unconscious. Imagine if your sister or your mother cannot bear what she has experienced and falls unconscious because of that… this is what the women of Manipur have experienced.

When we arrived in Manipur… we went to the Meitei area and we went to the Kuki area. When we arrived in the Meitei area, just when we were going into the Meitei area, we were told that if any of your security people are from the Kuki community, we will kill them. And when we went to the Kuki area, we were told that if any of your security people are from the Meitei community, we will shoot them. Before entering the Meitei area, we removed all the Kukis from our security and when we went to the Kuki area, we removed all the Meiteis from our security.

Imagine the situation… there is a complete divide between the state. There is blood everywhere; there is murder everywhere; there is rape everywhere. That is the situation in Manipur… and a few days ago, I sat in Parliament watching the Prime Minister speak. He spoke for two hours and thirteen minutes. He laughed, he joked, he smiled. His cabinet laughed, his cabinet joked, his cabinet smiled… they had a lot of fun. The Prime Minister spoke for two hours and thirteen minutes about everything – about the Congress, about me, about the ‘INDIA’ alliance. But he spoke for two minutes about Manipur.

The idea of India represents the idea of peace among its people. If there is violence, if there is a hatred, if there is murder, if there is rape, that is not India. If in a state, the people are killing each other, murdering each other, raping each other, that is not India. India is love and affection between its people, India is the bringing together of people.

So, I stated this in my speech in Parliament. I said that the BJP has killed the idea of India in Manipur. Manipur Mein Apne ‘Bharat Mata’ Ki Hatya Ki hai. You have murdered the idea of India in Manipur. You have destroyed thousands of families. You have allowed the rape of women. You have allowed the murder of hundreds of people. And as Prime Minister of this country, you are laughing! You spend two minutes talking about the murder of ‘Bharat Mata’. How dare you do this? How can you disrespect the idea of India? What have you been doing for the last four months? Why have you not been there? Why have you not tried to stop the violence? Because you are not a nationalist. Anybody who murders the idea of India cannot be a nationalist, anybody who murders the idea of India cannot love India.

Now, I have come to my family. Now, I want to ask you – suppose somebody tries to separate members of our family, suppose somebody tries to separate two brothers from each other, suppose somebody tries to separate a father from his daughter, do you think the relationship between the father and daughter will become weaker or stronger? If somebody tries to separate a family, the family becomes stronger; if somebody tries to separate a father and a son, the relationship between the father and the son becomes stronger… the love between the father and the son becomes stronger.

So, the BJP and the RSS do not understand what a family is. They don’t understand that the more they try to separate you and me, the closer we will become. They think – if we disqualify Rahul Gandhi, his relationship with Wayanad will break, No! If you disqualify Rahul Gandhi, his relationship with Wayanad will become even stronger, his love for the people of Wayanad will become even stronger, and the love that the people of Wayanad have for him will become stronger.

What is a family? A family is something that protects you, that looks after you in your difficult time, that shows you affection, that shows you respect… this is what you have done for me. You have protected me, you have given love, you have given me affection, you have given me respect. You (govt) can disqualify me fifty times, hundred times…. this relationship will only become stronger.

You have to understand, the BJP aims at destroying families. India is a family… they want to divide it; Manipur was a family… they tried to destroy it… thousands and thousands of families in Manipur have been destroyed by the policies of the BJP. So, they destroy families, they destroy the relationship between people. We bring people together, we strengthen families, we strengthen the relationship between people.

…. The BJP thinks it has divided and destroyed Manipur. We will bring Manipur back together. We will bring love back to Manipur. We will bring mutual respect back to Manipur. It took you two months to do it, you took two months to burn Manipur… it might take us five years to bring back love to Manipur, but we will do it. This is the fight between the BJP and the Congress.

I will give you another example of how we are helping bring people together. I remember when I first came here, there were floods and I remember people from all parties… UDF, LDF… everybody was working during the floods. Many families were destroyed by the floods, by the water. They lost family members. They lost their houses, somebody lost a brother, somebody lost a son and we decided that in our own small way, we would help those broken families. And that is why, we came up with the idea of building houses for those that had lost them, building houses and rebuilding the families.

Many people were excluded from the public housing scheme and I am proud that today, we will be handing over some of the keys to those houses. So, we can help the families of Wayanad rebuild themselves. This is a challenging project. We have to find the right beneficiary; we have to build the houses properly. So, I thank all the Congress and UDF workers who have helped us in this project and I thank everyone from Wayanad, regardless of which party you come from, regardless of what your political ideology is…. you have given me love and affection, you have given me respect and I love you very much and I am a part of your family.

I am here today after four months… I have come back to Wayanad as your MP. I am happy to come back, but I am also sad that I don’t see Oommen Chandy Ji here.  He was a leader of Kerala and Kerala showed the love and respect they had for him in his funeral. We are thankful for what he did for Kerala… the honesty and transparency with which he worked, and the love and affection that always guided him.