‘Militants couldn’t do anything to me…’: Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo account at Cambridge
Rahul Gandhi said during the Bharat Jodo Yatra in Kashmir a person came to him and showed ‘militants’ who were keeping a watch on Rahul Gandhi. “I felt I was in trouble but nothing happened as I went there only to listen with no violence in me,” Rahul Gandhi said.Though security personnel were not in favour of Gandhi allowing that person to walk along with him, Rahul Gandhi called the person. “The man asked me, ‘Mr Gandhi, have you really come here to listen to us?’. I said ‘yes’. He said, ‘Do you see those boys over there?’ I said, ‘Yes’. He said, ‘They are militants,” Rahul Gandhi narrated.”Militants should normally kill me. In that environment, they should kill me. The man said they are there and they are looking at you. I looked at them. and thought that I was in trouble. They were giving me this look, I am serious and I gave the look back and nothing happened, we just carried on. Why I am telling you this because they actually couldn’t do anything because they actually did not have the power to do anything, even if they wanted to. Because I came into that environment to listen, with no violence in me at all. And the vast number of people there saw that. That to me was the indicator of the power of listening and non-violence,” Rahul Gandhi said as he spoke on the topic of Learning to Listen in the 21st century.