Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday released his nine-minute speech at the India Caucus meeting on June 8, in which he urged the alliance to stop looking at its challenge through the lens of the upcoming state elections and instead embrace a continued “spirit of resistance”.
Gandhi also told them that his party was ready to “swallow all the poison” and endure any humiliation to keep the opposition united, positioning the Congress not just as a political rival but as an anchor for the bloc to put up a united and stubborn front against the BJP.
He also renewed his criticism of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Election Commission of India.
“I am sorry to say that there is confusion in this group. The confusion is that you, the SP, the TMC and the RJD think that the political tools you have used so far will remain effective. These tools worked only when the Indian state provided a fair field for them to operate in. That field does not exist anymore,” he said, arguing that the opposition must move from standard electoral politics to an aggressive “resistance movement” and mass mobilization.
Gandhi urged all partners to accept with “100%” certainty that the election was stolen and to stop treating it as a matter of doubt. The most prominent example he gave is Bengal where the Trinamool Congress lost the 2026 state elections to the BJP.
“I have many friends in the TMC. They were convinced that they were sweeping the elections in Bengal. I kept telling them, ‘You are in dreamland. I have seen what is happening. I have seen it in Gujarat. I have seen it in Madhya Pradesh. I have seen it in Chhattisgarh. I have seen it in Haryana and Maharashtra,'” he said.
He relied on the transformation of the Congress Party more than 100 years ago as a model for what the alliance should now become. He said that before 1927, Congress was merely a political organization.
“The day Gandhi said we wanted independence, we became a resistance movement,” he said, adding that if political parties were no longer able to function freely, resistance was the only tool that worked. “Resistance works. Wherever we resist, it succeeds. I have walked 4,000 kilometers across this country,” he said, referring to Bharat Guddu and Bharat Guddu Nyai Yatras.
Regarding the ideological position of the Congress, Gandhi was clear and unequivocal. “We will die in the Congress party before we stand with the BJP or the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or reach a compromise with them. You will have to cut off our heads to make that happen,” he said, adding that thousands of Congress workers across the country would say the same.
Gandhi admitted that he cannot embrace every partner unreservedly, pointing to the ongoing political battle with the Left parties in Kerala during the recent elections, but insisted that all narratives of chaos within the bloc are being sown by the BJP and its allies in the media.
