Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that universities in India, once bastions of free thought and expression, have now been converted to breeding grounds of fear, suppression, and blind obedience.

Publishing a video on social media today, Friday, January 26, of the interaction with the students, Gandhi said that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is trying to make sure that everybody in the country is "blindly obedient" to what it says and added that the answer to that is resistance.

The idea of India is going through fire to be further strengthened, Gandhi recently told a group of students in Meghalaya during his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.

"Can the future of India spread its wings within a cage? This is why politics and resistance matters for Indian students," he said.

In his interaction with the students along with Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh and Kanhaiya Kumar, Gandhi asked the students, "What is a slave?" 

"What the RSS is trying to do to India is trying to make sure everybody is blindly obedient to what they say? Can a country function like that?" he can be heard saying in the video. Gandhi claimed he wanted to meet the students in their university and not in a closed room.

Sharing a link to the video of the interaction, Ramesh — the Congress General Secretary — said in a post in Hindi on X, "Recently, during the Bharat Jodo Nyaya Yatra, Rahul Gandhi interacted with students in Meghalaya on many issues, including youth politics, atmosphere of fear and pressure spread in universities."

During this, Rahul Gandhi openly answered the questions of the students, he said.