Every Indian should be proud: Rahul Gandhi on ‘youth-led’ paper-leak protests

New Delhi: Leader of Opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said that every political party should respect the “expression of the future generation of this country”, adding that whatever happened during the recent times at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar should make every Indian proud.

Speaking during the discussion on The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026, Rahul Gandhi said, “I would like to say that I was very excited, reassured by what the future of this country did on our streets. This was not anger. This was not violence. This was not hatred but an expression of the future generation of this country. I believe that all political parties must respect this expression, including my friends in the BJP.”

“If my friends in the BJP would go and ask their own children what they felt about what their brothers and sisters were doing, they would find agreement among their own children. There is nothing wrong with what has happened, and every Indian should be proud,” he added.

Recounting his conversation with students who were participating in the Jantar Mantar protests, the LoP said that one of them presented a “very interesting perspective” in front of him.

“I asked the girl, ‘You told me that you were a student. What does it mean? Do you study in college, or school, or does it mean you read books?’ She gave the most beautiful answer; she said, ‘A student is someone who has an open mind and open heart, someone who right from the beginning accepts that they don’t know anything, student knows that whatever he knows would be superceded later by new knowledge, student understands that the universe is constantly changing… and so student understands that knowledge is constantly changing,” Gandhi said.

“She told me that there is another category of people; they are not students…They are absolutely convinced that they know everything; they believe that the universe is static, and they believe that the knowledge emerges from inside them; they believe that they are God, that everything that is to be known is known to them; they are arrogant, they don’t listen, they don’t respect other people’s truth. I said, what do you call these people? She said, ‘I call them idiots, ‘ he added.

–IANS