India is the only country that has been able to stare down China with the might of its border troops and the Chinese will be forced to realise the strategic mistake they are making by provoking a powerful neighbour, BJP leader Varun Gandhi said on Thursday. In an interview with PTI, the saffron party MP from Pilibhit (Uttar Pradesh) also said it was “a dream come true” for him as a devotee of Lord Hanuman that the Ram Temple was being built in Ayodhya after years of struggle.
Relating August 5, the day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of the temple, with the country’s Independence Day, Gandhi said, “India once had a tryst with destiny in August 1947. It has woken up anew, reconnecting with its civilisational ethos.” He said a successful resolution of the Ayodhya dispute is a hallmark of India’s system of governance, democracy and judiciary, while it also depicts a remarkable amity among people of different creeds and faiths in our country. “As a bhakt of Hanumanji, the establishment of the foundation stone of the Ram Janambhoomi temple is a dream come true for me,” the 40-year-old leader said. “Lord Ram is not just for Hindus, he is a remarkable emblem of the Indic civilisation,” he added.
On the recent stand-off between India and China at LAC, Gandhi said China has been notably aggressive across most of its border areas in the recent past, with tension observed in South China Sea, Senkaku Islands, Taiwan and in Tibet, but “India remains the only country that has been able to stare down the Chinese, using its border troops.” He further said many policy commentators voice apprehensions about China’s armed might, but it is often forgotten that India possesses the world’s largest and most experienced mountain fighting troops.
Describing death of India’s troops in Galwan Valley as a “seminal moment” in Indo-China relations, the BJP leader said he is confident that India’s armed forces, under Prime Minister Modi leadership, will hold forth and force the Chinese to realise the strategic mistake they are making in provoking India. Gandhi said it will cost China dearly to lose an economic powerhouse like India as a partner, while the Modi government’s push for bolstering its defence forces, while revising its overall strategic posture, will stand us well in the long-term.
The BJP leader, who first became an MP at the age of 29 years in 2009, also hailed Prime Minister Modi for steering the country through the COVID-19 pandemic. “It was due to Modi ji’s strong leadership and vision that the lockdown was a success, as he was able to galvanise the nation towards a hard lockdown. A weak leader would not have been able to do this,” he said.
Gandhi said the government utilised the lockdown period effectively for ramping up healthcare infrastructure, due to which the country now has a testing capacity of 10 lakh per day and has transformed from being an importer of PPE kits to a net exporter. Asserting that various policy measures taken by the government have also helped improve the COVID-19 recovery rate in a big way, Gandhi said all this would not have been possible without the “laser minded focus” of the Modi government.
He further said the country is also in a much stronger position now to deal with the pandemic on the economic front. “Letting no crisis go waste, this government has pushed for full liberalisation, enabling weaker PSUs (barring a few in strategic sectors) to be sold off or privatised or wound down,” he said.
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