Gandhi, who has served 19 years in the Indian legislature, was removed after he was found guilty of defaming Modi’s surname in a 2019 case filed by a politician in the prime minister’s party. Gandhi was convicted on the defamation charge this week and sentenced by a court in Modi’s home state to two years imprisonment, which, under Indian law, allowed the parliamentary speaker to suspend him from politics.
India is to go to polls next year in a general election that will determine whether Modi gets a third consecutive term as prime minister.
In an unusual display of solidarity Friday, more than a dozen Indian political parties — including a right-wing party in Maharashtra, the center-left party that governs West Bengal, the communists and caste-based movements in northern India — emerged to voice support for Gandhi and criticize his expulsion as a dangerous precedent for India’s political institutions.
“This is a direct murder of democracy,” said Uddhav Thackeray, a former chief minister of Maharashtra and the leader of a right-wing party in the state, which includes the financial hub Mumbai. Other parties variously called Gandhi’s expulsion “a cowardly act” and an attempt to “silence the voice of the opposition,” and called for the withdrawal of the expulsion.
Meanwhile, members of Gandhi’s party, the Indian National Congress, took to the streets in Gujarat, Rajpur, Lucknow, Delhi and several other parts of India to protest the disqualification of their leader, in some instances clashing with police.
Gandhi signaled Friday that he was prepared to go to jail. “I am fighting for the voice of India,” he wrote on Twitter. “I will pay any price for it.”
The court hearing the Gandhi case in Gujarat convicted Gandhi of criminally defaming all those with the Modi last name because of comments he made during the 2019 election campaign. BJP officials argued that by likening Modis to “thieves” on the campaign trail, Gandhi defamed all Indians who had that surname and were members of the Modi caste.
Although the sentence was suspended pending an appeal, it opened the way for Gandhi’s removal from Parliament.
Gandhi’s ejection occurs against the background of increasingly urgent warnings by academics, political analysts and opposition parties that the country is sliding into authoritarianism. Hours before Gandhi was expelled on Friday, 14 opposition parties approached the Supreme Court asking it to stop the government from using law enforcement agencies to hobble political opponents.
In a news conference late Friday, Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi described Gandhi’s disqualification as part of the “systematic and repetitive emasculation of democratic institutions by the ruling party.”
Several members of Modi’s governing party publicly welcomed Gandhi’s ejection on Friday, hailing it as a lawful punishment.
But they also made clear that the expulsion was linked to other public comments by Gandhi that have infuriated members of the Indian right. In recent months, the Congress leader has been one of the loudest critics of the Modi government and the prime minister’s ties to the Indian tycoon Gautam Adani. In several speeches in Britain, Gandhi urged audiences to pay heed to what he called India’s declining democracy — appeals that BJP officials have condemned as tantamount to inviting Western interference in India’s domestic affairs.
Speaking to journalists Friday, Modi’s environment minister, Bhupender Yadav, reiterated that not only did Gandhi defame Modi’s caste, but he also should “work for the country’s democracy instead of going to London and insulting it.”
Indian Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur, also a BJP member, said at a news conference Friday that the disqualification showed Gandhi that he was not above the law.
“Making false accusations, using uncivilized language, insulting people and using foul words had become a habit for him,” Thakur said.
*This story has not been edited by The Infallible staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.
