When this statement made by the prime minister was brought to my attention, my instant reaction was to burst out laughing. That was really the only way I could respond to such a ridiculous statement by an apparently ignoramus prime minister. But then it struck me that this is the kind of manipulative deceit that he is known to practice.
Since the beginning of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the prime minister has been under attack from the Opposition for the spectacular failure of his decade-long governance, or rather misgovernance; and one could see that he was getting more and more agitated by the attacks, particularly due to the continued sniping by Rahul Gandhi. The only manner in which the prime minister was responding was with his divisive and hateful speeches.
Now, in the last phase of the elections, he needed a diversionary tactic to keep the Opposition occupied, and so, Mahatma Gandhi was a convenient gambit. And how spectacularly he achieved his objective! For the past 24 hours now, he has kept the Opposition and the liberal intelligentsia busy countering his slanderous assertion that the world did not know of the greatness of Bapu till Richard Attenborough made the biopic Gandhi.