Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Monday used the ‘chakravyuh’ metaphor as a leit motif to say that an atmosphere of fear pervades the country and allege that the budget’s sole aim was to strengthen the framework of monopoly capital, political monopoly and the deep state.Participating in the debate in the Lok Sabha on the Union Budget of 2024-25, Gandhi claimed the fear is spreading through a ‘chakravyuh’ with everybody trapped in it, including BJP MPs, farmers and workers.
“Thousands of years ago in Haryana, in Kurukshetra, six people killed a youth, Abhimanyu, in a ‘chakravyuh’. A ‘chakravyuh’ has violence and fear. Abhimanyu was trapped and killed in the ‘chakravyuh’,” he said.
Gandhi’s reference was to the Mahabharat legend according to which Abhimanyu was killed in a ‘chakravyuh’ — a multi-tiered maze and formation — in which he was trapped.
He said the ‘chakravyuh’ is also called a ‘Padmavyūha’ which is a multi-tiered formation that looks like a lotus (the BJP symbol).
“You build a ‘chakravyuh’, and we break the ‘chakravyuh’,” Gandhi said, asserting that the opposition would break this cycle by carrying out a caste census.
“In the 21st century, another ‘chakravyuh’ has been prepared, it is in the form of lotus and the prime minister (Narendra Modi) wears the symbol on his chest. What was done with Abhinmanyu is being done with youth, women, farmers and MSMEs,” he said.