Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar were NRIs, Rahul Gandhi says in US

NEW DELHI: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has described prominent leaders of India's freedom struggle as "NRIs" (non-resident Indian) and said the party was born of an "NRI movement".
"The original congress movement was an NRI movement. Mahatma Gandhi was an NRI, Jawaharlal Nehru came back from England, Ambedkar, Azad, Patel, these were all NRIs," Rahul said on Thursday.
The Gandhi scion was addressing a nearly 2,000-strong crowd of the Congress party's NRI supporters at a meeting in New York during the final leg of his two-week-long tour in the United States.
Elaborating on his unconventional view of the nation's founding fathers, Rahul said, "Every single one of them went to the outside world, saw the outside world, returned back to India and used some of the ideas they got and transformed India."
Rahul said there were thousands of such "NRIs" whose contribution to India is yet to be recognised. Citing the example of Verghese Kurien, father of the White Revolution, Rahul pointed out that he belonged to the category of a non-resident Indian as well.
"One of the biggest successes in India, the milk that most of India drinks, it was man called Mr Kurien, he was an NRI. He came from the United States and he transformed India... There are thousands of examples that we have not recognised," he claimed.
Hailing the Indian diaspora in the US, Rahul said just because they'd settled in a foreign land didn't mean that they did not contribute to the development of their native country, and went on to call them "the backbone" of India.
"Everywhere you look in this country, there is an Indian person working for America, working for India, living peacefully and building this country and our country... You are actually the backbone of our country. Some people view India as a geophraphical construct. I view India as a set of ideas. So for me, anybody who has the ideas that make up India is an Indian," Rahul explained.
The remarks came amid a sustained attack on the BJP-led Union government which, Rahul claimed, was practicing divisive politics and thereby threatening tolerance and communal harmony in India.