Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi has said in the US that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s mid-election claim that he was a godsend revealed his “psychological collapse” and the Lok Sabha poll results had punctured the “carefully constructed 56-inch persona”.

The Congress MP’s latest dig at Modi once again stressed the INDIA bloc’s ideological battle with the BJP-RSS for preserving the nation’s founding principle of “unity in diversity”.

Addressing students and the diaspora in Washington DC, Rahul said: “The idea of Mr Modi, 56-inch chest, direct connection with God, that’s all gone; it’s history now. He realises it, India realises it, his partners in (the) government realise it, three or four senior ministers in his government realise it.”

In an interactive session with students and faculty at the US capital’s Georgetown University, Rahul said the Prime Minister realised midway through his election campaign that he was not getting anywhere near 300 seats.

“I think early on he realised this thing is going wrong. We were getting inputs from regular sources, some of the agencies… it was pretty clear that they were in trouble…. And we knew when he said I speak directly to God that we had actually blown him apart… People think, well this was the Prime Minister saying that I am special, I am unique and I talk to God. But that’s not how we saw it. Internally, we saw it as a psychological collapse.”

Stating that the 18th Lok Sabha elections were not fair, Rahul elaborated: “I don’t believe that in a fair election, the BJP would come anywhere near 240 seats. I would be surprised. They had a huge financial advantage and had locked our bank accounts.”

Rahul added: “The Election Commission was doing what they wanted. The entire campaign was structured so that Mr Modi could carry out his agenda across the country…. I don’t view it as a free election at all. I view it as a rather controlled election.”

Rahul attributed the INDIA bloc’s battle with these odds to several factors.

“Multiple things came together. Before the elections, we kept stressing the idea that the institutions have been captured and we don’t have a fair playing field,” he said, recalling that the message did not percolate down to the masses. He added that someone then came up with the idea of holding up the Constitution.

“I started holding up the Constitution. And everything we had said suddenly just exploded,” he said, adding that the poor, disenfranchised and oppressed in India realised that everything would be lost if the Constitution was taken away.

“There was also the issue of the caste census, which became significant and is a fundamental question in India. The bhagidari (share) of institutions, structures and the power dynamics of Indian states came into focus. These things suddenly began to converge. I was frankly blown away by the wisdom of India.”

Stating that the caste census is an “unstoppable idea” now, Rahul said: “It’s a question of fairness. I, as a politician, do not want to live in a country where 90 per cent of the people do not have access to opportunity. Many people will disagree with it, many people in the BJP and the RSS will say don’t ask this question, let a small minority of people take all the fruits of the country…”

On the policy implications of a caste census and whether there would be an increase in reservations, the Congress MP was guarded, stating it would depend on what would come out of these studies. The Congress manifesto guaranteed that it would pass a constitutional amendment to raise the 50 per cent cap on reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs if voted to power.

While he repeatedly said the fear that had prevailed in the nation in the first decade of the Modi regime has eased since the election results, Rahul maintained that most other issues persist because of the alleged capture of institutions.

“Fighting and winning elections is one thing but undoing the damage the RSS and the BJP have done to institutions is a much deeper problem and that is not going to be done easily or simply. The real challenge in front of India is how to make our institutions neutral again…”

He, however, said that he does not hate Modi. “I don’t actually hate Mr Modi. He’s got a point of view, I don’t hate him. In fact, in many moments I empathise with him.”