Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said India needed a wide, “global” vision to deal with China, which he felt would be achieved through long-term thinking unhindered by an obsession with building one leader’s image and creating internal rifts.

In his third video on China, the Congress leader continued with his critique of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s persona and politics, pointing out that one man’s image cannot be a substitute for a national vision.

Rahul hinted at institutional deficiencies in a tweet accompanying the video: “The Prime Minister is 100% focused on building his own image. India’s captured institutions are all busy doing this task. One man’s image is not a substitute for a national vision.”

The Congress ran a simultaneous campaign on social media explaining how “the only vision the BJP has is to protect Modi’s image, which is falling apart on its own due to his failures on many fronts”.

Explaining why India can’t confront China today, Rahul said in the video: “Because we are not thinking long-term; because we are not thinking big and because we are disturbing our internal balance. We are fighting amongst each other.

“Just look at the politics. All day long, all day long, Indian is fighting Indian. And it is because there is no clear-cut vision going forward. That is why I’m aggravated. Because I can see that a huge opportunity is being lost. Why?”

A view has been gaining ground that the internal fights are weakening India, that foreign policy has crumbled under Modi and that the society is fractured along ideological, communal and political lines.

The government shares an antagonistic relationship with Opposition parties, notwithstanding the façade of unity during a national crisis. The main Opposition party, the Congress, has accused the BJP of pulling down the Madhya Pradesh government and attempting to destabilise the Rajasthan government in the middle of a global pandemic.

Rahul said in the video: “I know that the Prime Minister is an opponent. My responsibility is to question him. My responsibility is to ask questions and to put pressure on him so he does his work. His responsibility is to give the vision. It’s not there.

Narendra Modi PTI

“The first thing is you’re not going to take on China without a vision. And by that I don’t mean a national vision. I mean an international vision. Belt and Road (a Chinese international project), an attempt to change the nature of the planet. India has to have a global vision. India now has to become an idea. And it has to become a global idea. So that’s the thing that’s going to protect India, is actually thinking big.”

Arguing that India has to negotiate China from a psychological position of strength, the Congress parliamentarian said: “If you deal with them from a position of strength, you can work with them, you can get what you need, and it can be actually done. But if they sense weakness then you had it.

“Of course we have this border issue and we have to resolve this border issue. But we have to change our approach, we have to change how we think. This is the point at which the road parts. If we go this way we become a major player, if we go that way, we become irrelevant.”

On the border crisis, the Congress yet again asked the government to share the truth with the nation amidst reports of 40,000 Chinese troops gathering along the Line of Actual Control.

Congress spokesperson Ajay Maken said: “Reports suggest that China is defying the disengagement understanding and 40,000 PLA men have not moved since the last week. The government must tell the nation what is the plan to restore the status quo that existed before May 2020.”

Referring to what Rahul has been asking for two months, Maken said: “When the Prime Minister says nobody has intruded into Indian territory, does he mean wherever the Chinese troops are present today is their territory? The government’s refusal to share the factual position, its flip-flops and contradictory statements hurt India’s interests.”

Another Congress spokesperson, Manish Tewari, created a flutter by asking questions that hinted at something far more sinister than what is in the public domain.

Tewari tweeted: “1. Why did Chinese invade India? 2. Why is disengagement now stalled? Is it some personal ‘commitments’ made to China in Wuhan & Mamallapuram especially with regard to US that were not fulfilled? Has opacity around those informal summits not hurt India’s strategic interests?”

Modi had held two one-on-one no-agenda summits with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan and Mamallapuram.