Congress president Rahul Gandhi, while talking about opportunities (or lack thereof) of success in India, took the idea of a metaphor a bit too far when he said that the person who founded the soft drinks company Coca-Cola was essentially a "shikanji seller" in the United States.

Shikanji is a popular north Indian lemon-based summer drink.

Rahul was speaking at an OBC outreach rally in New Delhi when he made his comments. "Everybody here must have heard of Coca-Cola... everybody's heard about the company, right?" Gandhi asked at his rally.

"Now tell me who started Coca-Cola? Who was he; does anybody know?" Rahul questioned, before answering: "I'll tell you... Voh America mein shikanji bechta tha, paani mein cheeni milaata tha (Coca-Cola's founder used to sell shikanji in the United States, he used to mix sugar in water)."

#WATCH Congress President Rahul Gandhi talks about origins of the Coca-Cola & McDonald's company, says, "Coca-Cola company ko shuru karne wala ek shikanji bechne wala vyakti tha..." #Delhi pic.twitter.com/MATnaR734J ANI (@ANI) June 11, 2018

"His experience was respected, his ability was respected and he went on to form Coca-Cola," Rahul went on to say before drawing an extremely similar comparison and saying that the founder of McDonald's used to run a "dabha" (a roadside eatery).

"Show me such a restaurant owner in India who went on to form a Coca-Cola," Rahul said at the end of his analogy, betraying the only sense of what he was actually trying to talk about -- an apparent lack of opportunities to succeed in India.



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