JOIN USCongress president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said BJP members have started retreating on seeing him wondering whether he would hug them too.
“Now, whenever I come across BJP MPs they take two steps backwards. They may be thinking he may hug us,” Gandhi said at a book launch function here on Wednesday evening.
Gandhi stole the show in the Lok Sabha during the debate on the 'No-Confidence Motion' against the NDA government when he hugged Prime Minister Narendra Modi after launching a sharp criticism of his government.
Citing his visit to Vietnam about a decade back, Gandhi said his interactions during the trip taught him that one could fight a person without hating him.
“You can fight someone with all your might but hate is a choice that you make,” he said.
Referring to BJP veteran L K Advani, who was in the audience, Gandhi said he may disagree with the former deputy prime minister and fight him politically without hating him.
“I can fight Mr Advani every single inch, but I don’t hate him, I can even hug him,” the Congress president said.
“The atmosphere in politics, we tend to see the world as either them and us and this is not my nature. But this is the design of our politics, its confrontational and winner takes all,” Gandhi said.
“We, the Congress, will take on the BJP and they will fight us, but we won’t hate them. I don’t know if we can expect the same from them,” Gandhi said.