‘Were in dreamland’: Rahul recalls warning TMC leaders ahead of Bengal loss

COngress leader Rahul indira nehru gandhi on fri released his nine-minute speech communication at the republic of india axis meeting on June 8, urging the alliance to stop viewing their challenge through the lens of upcoming state elections and instead adopt a continuous “spirit of resistance.”Gandhi also told them that his party was willing to “swallow all poison” and bear any humiliation to keep the Opposition united, positioning the Congress not just as a political competitor but as the bloc’s anchor to mount a unified, unyielding front against the Bharatiya Janata Party.He also renewed his criticism of the BJP and the Election Commission of India.“I’m sorry to say that there is confusion in this group. The confusion is that you, the SP, the TMC, the RJD believe that the political instruments you have used so far will still work. These only worked 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 transition from standard electoral politics into an aggressive, mass-mobilisation “resistance movement”.Gandhi urged all partners to accept, with “100%” certainty, that the elections were being stolen and to stop treating it as a matter of doubt. The sharpest example he offered was 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 election in Bengal. I kept telling them. You’re in dreamland. I have seen what happens. 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 in Maharashtra,” he said.He drew on the Congress party’s own transformation more than 100 years ago as the template for what the alliance must now become. Before 1927, he said, Congress was merely a political organisation.“The day Gandhi ji said we want independence, we became a resistance movement,” he said, adding that if political parties could no longer function freely, resistance was the only instrument that worked. “Resistance works. Wherever we resist, it works. I have walked 4,000 kilometres across this country,” he said, referencing his Bharat Jodo and Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatras.On Congress’s own ideological position, Gandhi was unequivocal. “We will die in the Congress party before we stand with or compromise with the BJP or the RSS. You will have to cut off our heads to make it happen,” he said, adding that lakhs of Congress workers across the country would say the same.Gandhi acknowledged he could not embrace every partner unreservedly, noting an ongoing political fight with the Left parties in Kerala during the recent elections, but insisted that all narratives of disorganisation within the bloc were being planted by the BJP and its allies in the media.