“My mother came to my room and cried... because she understands that power is poison,” Rahul Gandhi said on Sunday in a highly emotional speech after taking over the new mantle.
Striking a personal note, the 42-year-old leader in his maiden address as party vice-president, recalled the moments when his mother and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi walked into his room on Saturday night.
“Last night each one of you congratulated me. My mother came to my room and she sat with me and she cried... because she understands that power so many people seek is actually a poison,” Mr. Gandhi said at the AICC session in Jaipur.
He recalled the time his grandmother and the then Prime Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984 by security guards with whom he used to play badminton as “friends” and how his father Rajiv Gandhi, who was himself “broken inside”, showed a “glimmer of hope” to the people.
The young leader received a standing ovation by the audience which included Sonia and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he said “We should not chase power, only use it to empower others.”
He said his mother could see that power is poison “because she is not attached to it. The only antidote to this poison for all of us to see what it really is and not become attached to it. We should not chase power for the attributes of power. We should only use it to empower the voices.”
Mr. Gandhi recalled that as a little boy, “he loved to play badminton. I loved it because it gave me balance in this complicated world. I was taught how to play in my grandmother’s house by two police men who protected my grandmother as my friends.
“Then one day they killed my grandmother and took away the balance from my life. I felt like I had not felt before.”
Mr. Gandhi recalled how he knew his father was “broken inside” and “terrified of what lay in front of him“.
“My father was in Bengal and he came back.... It was the first time in my life that I saw my father crying. He was the bravest person I knew and yet I saw him cry. I could see...I was small, but I could see my father was broken. They had taken away his mother and he was broken. In those days our country was not what it is today.
“In the eyes of the world we had nothing, we were worthless.... Nobody thought about us. That same evening I saw my father addressing the nation on TV. I know like me he was broken inside. I know like me he was terrified of what lay in front of him. As we spoke in that dark night, I felt a small glimmer of hope.
“It was like small ray of light in the dark sky and I still remember what it felt. The next day I realised that many people had seen it as well.”
Amid repeated applause from the gathering during his 45—minute speech, Rahul said “as I look back... I have a political career of eight years and 42 years old...I could see that it was that small ray of hope in the darkness that helped changed India into what it is today.”
He said that he realises he has a big responsibility in front of him and that people are standing behind him.
Mr. Gandhi said without hope nothing can be achieved. “We can have plans, we can have ideas but unless you have hope, you cannot change.”
The leader said Congress is the symbol of hope. “Congress party is now my life, people of India are my life. I will fight for people of India and for this party. I will fight with everything that I have.”
His speech is pure and unadulterated.... it is genuine....
Wow. what a sentimental movie. please act, dont watch, if you dont want
to take part then dont take charge
Congressmen are clever. They will let Rahul have the poison, while they
revel in the "cream" of corruption...
as a future prime minister candidate of congress party u should have outlined programe how to make india a super power and not tell the kitchen stories.
Power is poison. If so he should keep off
Rahul Gandhi must remember that the past performance is likely the
best predictor of the future performance of a person. His speech shows
his poverty of real political experiences, which also meant he had to
draw anecdotes from family memoirs. He had 8 years and immense power
at his disposal as an unquestionable messiah of Congress. Remember the
old Spiderman quote, "With great power comes great responsibility". At
the least, Mr. Gandhi could have improved the representation of women
and youth in his party. He could have taken steps to organically grow
a set of young leaders for his party. But he has shown preference for
dynastic heirs and made only cursory or gimmicky attempts to engage
with the Indian public. Mr. Gandhi has not publicly shown any real
appetite to solve the huge issues that this country face. One can only
wish that he makes good use of the extraordinary power that he has
been given solely by virtue of his birth.
Power is poison.He know that and he still wants it
@ prashant singh: cudnt agree more.
In Congress's "Chintan Shivir" congressmen lamented the total
absence of Congress supporters on "social media" and other online
forums. They had promised to do something in this matter. Reading
some of the comments in this forum (Shankar,Dr Kolur Suresh
Gowda,Dr.Rahul Gopinathan)it seems that Congress has really done
something very very fast on the matter..
I wish I could believe Rahul Gandhi's words that "I will fight for
people of India". I cannot. Because in the same sentence he evokes
that he will fight for the Congress party. Unfortunately, what the
Congress party has shown repeatedly is that "fighting for people of
India and the Congress" is an oxymoron.
It was an interesting speech. It recalled the sadness within the
Gandhi family when Prime Minister Gandhi was assassinated, seen from
the vantage of a little boy. I share the sadness. But, listening to
the internal viewpoint, I cannot help thinking of the genocide of the
Sikhs that followed.
I am so done with the Gandhi family and the bunch of sycophants who
call themselves the Congress party. The people of India need a change.
The Congress party had 65 years, and I can safely say that it has
failed a nation, and a billion dreams.
the speech is so self centered, it doesn't give me too much hope for change.
Rahul has said that he wants to Em POWER people.He must tell his mother
that power is not poison and so he wants to give that others also.In
Tamilnadu people are short of POWER.His alliance party says it is a
DARK rule if POWER is not given.He must tell his mother that Tamilnadu would not seek power if it is poison.He can tell her the famous saying
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.If he wants to give POWER to people they would tend to corrupt.The mother and the son should take into consideration of all these about POWER.
doodu
chennai
21st jan
An emotional speech to fool some people of India and his party worker. What has happened to his family was because they made power a poison for themselves and before that they had given poison to thousands of families of India.
Rahul failed to realise the pain of those families and he remembers his own.
becoming a political leader means you must be expert politician. to be a
leader you just require pure heart and simple mind. glimmer of hope, it
shall be.
It reminds of the movie 'Rajneeti' when Katrina gave speech just after
the death of her Husband Arjun Rampal. Mr. Gandhi is true. Congress
helped India what is it today. And we, the common man better
understand where we stand. And sorry, I cant even say thank you for
this. India, an example in history has lost its respect, its value in
front of this world. We are identified as poors, corrupts etc; I
appeal to my countrymen DO NOT VOTE for congress and get fooled by
these emotional speech. USE YOUR BRAIN. I bet if congress comes to
power again, WE WILL BE THE BIGGEST LOSER FOR EVER.
JAI HIND
do you really expect the people to believe ? if power is poison, then
why are you and your mother taking it into your hands. why dont
you laeve it some others who can manage it for the peoples benefit.
Their understanding of India is limited to their family which uses a borrowed surname
It irritates me to the core to see someone get so much power in a platter - it alarms me after 60 yrs we have not yet figured out that to move ahead we have to move towards a more grass-roots base politics and not mata-pita-beta politics
I was taught in my school that Actions Speak Louder Than Words. I guess
perhaps my school was wrong or outdated or I need to reverse this saying
to suit it better for the contemporary!
when power is poison then why Rahul wants to become PM & why he needs prepare cong.for elections.Sonia must educate her son to eschew politics in such a case.
There is no remorse from Raghul for the massacre of 3000 Sikhs in broad daylight on that
fateful 3 days in 1984. Unlike the 2002 Gujarath riots when series of guilt are being punished
including MLAs and minister, not one single conviction has taken place in New Delhi till
today.
Mr. Rahul said that his mother cried because "she understands that power that so many peoples seek is actually a poison".He further goes on to aver that no one should get attached to it and that we should not chase power for the attributes of power and use it to empower others"(read People of this country).If indeed he is really and truly serious then as the very first step he and his mother should advise the PM to have a Bill Passed by the Parliament to EMPOWER the PEOPLE TO RECALL THEIR REPRESENTATIVE
SHOULD THEY BE DISSATISFIED WITH HIM/HER.He should further advise all his partymen and ministers that empowering the people is the Basic Tenet of Democracy as defined by that great man,Abraham Lincoln that it is all about Government of the people,by the people and for the people,not merely giving them just the right to vote.
Power may be poisonous but it is certainly illusary. Under its influence, the elected representatives ignore the very public who had chosen them.That is why they question the authority of the common man ! We had experienced it during the Anna Hazare agitations. Although that was one of the best opportunity Rahul Gandhi got to prove his leadership, he missed and messed it.
Welcome and god bless you Rahul. May you by the grace of Almighty lead our country in
peace,hope, prosperity and joy. May the brothers and sisters of Mother India support you in
all your endeavors to uplift our society
Both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi suffered great political defeat and
personal humiliation solely because of a small coterie of yes men who
benefited enormously by misleading in the guise of advising. Raghul has
to avoid such coterie else face the late 70's of Indira Gandhi and late
80's Rajiv Gandhi.
I Completely admire Mr Rahul Gandhi and the sacrifices made by his father & grandmother.The young Indians are with him and he would definitely bring a change in the Indian development in the near future.We wish him all the best.
Rahul should have mentioned the anti-sikh riots in his speech. That
would have convinced me that he was sincere.
If Rahul Gandhi is broken inside, he must not come to politics. If he is not strong enough himself, it will be a disastrous for India that such a person is taking position to lead India. It is not the loyalists or power that boosts his capacity. He must understand that his father and mother did same mistakes and crying. Power is poison when it is mishandled. One must have capacity of his own, family, loyalists, wealth, power etc. nothing can make a proper leader. One has to fight and acquire the leadership. Inherited leadership will not make India a powerful country. If the dynasty congress is ruling the country, a few more decades will just pass without achieving anything. If I have to be with congress, I would prefer congress without SP, Lalu, NCP, DMK and the loyalists circling him.
Mr.Rahul Gandhi emulates his father's understanding of the pulse of
the people. It suggests that the Gandhian genealogy is the soul and
the only hope of our country's cherished aspirations, ethos and
values. The experimentation in Indian politics with non-Gandhian
leaderships has always been a fiasco. The country at this juncture
need's a charismatic visionary which is inflected in INC's decision to
accord a prominent role to Rahul Gandhi. We can sincerely expect from
the political maturity acquired by Mr.Gandhi's eight years of sound
political activism shall stand in good stead, in triumphantly treading
a tortuously impeding charismatic-ally embedded righteous path for the
common good of Indian people.
You are right Mr. Gandhi. India is not the same as it was when you were
a child. It is in no mood to accept legacies as they are. You are in for
a brutal test. From here on it will only get tougher. Best of luck.
Jai Hind.
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