Congress president Rahul Gandhi disagreed with the view that ‘India is the most unsafe place for women’, but said Indian men did not view the women in the country as equal and they should change their outlook.

Addressing a gathering at Bucerius Summer School Germany’s Hamburg on Wednesday, Gandhi said: “I would disagree with the idea that India is the most unsafe place for women. But it is true there is a huge amount of violence against women in India. A lot of it is visible, lot of it is on the streets, but huge amount of it is invisible.”

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“It happens in houses. A woman never talks about it. I think it is a cultural issue, it is an issue of how Indian men view Indian women and I think it requires a huge amount of work to fix that problem,” he added.

The leader said the other component is that the level of violence in India is increasing. “Whenever the levels of violence increase, the people who are weakest, bear the consequences the most. The fact that violence is increasing dramatically in India, women are actually getting a huge share of it.”

“It is a tragedy. It is the single most important thing that India needs to do is to change the way its men view Indian women. Frankly, it is going to take a huge effort, but it is the duty of every single Indian to do it,” he added.

You cannot build a country if we don’t involve women. Indian men have to start viewing women as their equals: Congress President @RahulGandhi #WillkommenRahulGandhi #Bucerius pic.twitter.com/WDWoear35p

— Congress (@INCIndia) August 22, 2018

“I do a lot of work to try and get women into the system, try and get women into the party, Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha and and assemblies. We are championing right now a bill on reservation for women in Parliament.

“So that should be big step going forward. A lot has been done at the lower levels in the elections, places are reserved for women. But at the end of it is a cultural issue as well. It is literally the way the Indian male view the women. He has to start viewing her as an equal, with respect. He has to start treating her with respect. I am sorry to say, that he does not,” the Congress leader said.

Gandhi also talked about the incidents of lynching and claimed that the incidents of lynching in India were due to anger emanating from joblessness and “destruction” of small businesses due to demonetization and the “poorly implemented” GST by the ruling BJP.

In his address in Hamburg, Gandhi traced the creation of ISIS to warn against a similar situation at home if people are excluded from the development process.

“It is very dangerous in the 21st century to exclude people. If you don’t give people a vision in the 21st century somebody else will give them one.

“And that’s the real risk of excluding large number of people from our development processes,” he said, accusing the BJP government of excluding tribals, Dalits and minorities from the development process.

Asserting that the transformation taking place in the world requires certain protection for people, he accused the current dispensation in India of taking these protections away from them and hitting the informal economy through demonetisation and GST, causing anger which is leading to lynching incidents.

“They (the BJP government) feel that tribal communities, poor farmers, lower caste people, minorities shouldn’t get the same benefits as the elite,” the Congress president alleged.

Gandhi claimed that the other thing the BJP has done is that they have started attacking the support structures created to help certain groups of people.

“That is not the only damage they’ve done. There is something much more dangerous,” he said.

He alleged that a couple of years back Prime Minister Narendra Modi “demonetised the Indian economy and destroyed the cash flow” of all small and medium businesses rendering millions jobless.

“They imposed a badly conceptualised GST which complicated lives further,” Gandhi said.

“Large numbers of people who worked in small businesses were forced back to the villages and these three things that the government has done has made India angry.

“And that’s what you get to read in the newspapers. When you hear about lynchings, when you hear about attacks on Dalits in India, when you hear about attacks on minorities in India, that’s the reason for it,” Gandhi said.

He said that some of his own party members did not like it when he hugged Modi in Parliament.

Gandhi also said there is a big job problem in India but the prime minister refuses to see it.

“You have to (first) accept the problem, to fix it,” he said.

Gandhi also spoke about India and its progress over the last 70 years.

Referring to his famous hug, after a no-holds-barred attack during a Parliament debate last month, Gandhi said, “When I hugged PM Modi in Parliament, some within my party did not like it.”

The Congress president also talked about his father, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assailants.

“My father was killed by a terrorist in 1991. When the same terrorist died few years later, I wasn’t happy. I saw myself in his children,” he said.

I have suffered violence and I can tell you, there is only one way to let it go – Forgiveness: Congress President @RahulGandhi pic.twitter.com/HJZfhybXOu

— Congress (@INCIndia) August 22, 2018

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) chief Velupillai Prabhakaran, responsible for the killing of Rajiv Gandhi, was shot dead by Sri Lankan troops in 2009.

(With inputs from agencies)