Democracy is under attack | Opposition being surveilled on | Rahul Gandhi at Cambridge University

Former Congress chief and senior opposition leader Rahul Gandhi told a group of students at Cambridge University that Indian democracy was under threat and their several opposition leaders, including himself, were being spied on by using Israeli spyware Pegasus.

Rahul Gandhi Cambridge Lecture

Mr. Gandhi gave the lecture on February 28, but it was shared on Twitter on Friday by Congress leader Sam Pitroda.
With the BJP accusing Mr. Gandhi of ‘maligning India on foreign soil’, Congress struck back by simply saying that Prime Minister Modi had dragged up domestic politics on foreign territory and had even made “making fun of the nation by claiming that people were ashamed of their Indian heritage.”

Mr. Gandhi stated during his lecture on “Learning to Listen in the Twenty-First Century,” that “Indian democracy is under pressure and attack. The institutional framework required for democracy… Parliament, the judiciary. the free press and even the concept of mobilization, all of these are becoming restricted. We are experiencing a threat to the basic structure of democracy”.
Pegasus is installed on the phones of many political leaders. I, too, had a Pegasus on my phone.”Intelligence officers have called me and told me that we’re recording everything I say on the phone,” he claimed.

Key aspects of the alleged assault on democracy, according to the former Congress president, include media and judiciary capture and control, surveillance and intimidation, coercion by federal law enforcement agencies, attacks on tribals, Dalits, and minorities, and dissent suppression.

“I have several criminally liable cases filed against me for things that should not be classified as criminal cases. When the media and the democratic architecture are under attack, it is extremely difficult for the opposition to communicate with the public. So we decided to return to Indian history and culture,” Mr. Gandhi explained, explaining the motivation for his 4,081-kilometer-long Bharat Jodo Yatra.
Mr. Gandhi recalled an incident during the Kashmir leg of the Yatra in which a boy approached him and told him that militants were watching him.”They [the militants] had no power to do anything because I came here with no violence in me,” he explained.

In response to the BJP’s allegations of demonizing India, Congress spokesperson and social media head Supriya Shrinate stated that the Prime Minister had mocked the Opposition and referred to India’s domestic politics in places such as Shanghai, California, Toronto, Seoul, and Abu Dhabi.

‘If we start recalling those statements of the Prime Minister against the Opposition, the BJP won’t get a place to hide. They will understand that Rahul Gandhi spoke about democracy if they listen to his hour-long speech… When he says that India is a valuable asset on the global stage of democracy, he is referring to you and our democracy.

Mr. Gandhi is on a week-long tour of the United Kingdom, where he will hold closed-door sessions at Cambridge University on Big Data and Democracy and India-China relations. He is also scheduled to meet with members of the Indian Overseas Congress’s UK chapter and speak at an “Indian Diaspora Conference” in London this weekend.