Our Life, Our Times :: 49 :: Dipping standard of political discourse

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That politicians are mostly despicable perhaps need not be emphasized. They are aggressive and vicious where their interests are concerned. They would, however, maintain decorum withinthe four walls of an assembly. But even that is slowly disappearing. Outside when making political speeches they just let themselves go at each other. One can, therefore, briefly describe them as bounders of unspeakable conduct.

Recently, there was a ruckus over a statement made by Rahul Gandhi about the Prime Minister, NarendraModi. Speaking at a rally for elections to Delhi Legislative Assembly he is reported to have said while talking on the issue of unemployment that young people are going to beat up the Prime Minister after six months with sticks and he would not be able to come out of his house. He said this in most disrespectful language. In Hindi there are two ways of communicating – one, for communicating with or about a senior or elderly person, the other for regular intercourse with friends and family which is or can be shorn of usage of respectful words. Rahul used the latter kind of language which immediately hurt the sensibilities of sensitive people. The hatred for the Prime Minister that he has nursed all these years within came out in a torrent.

No wonder there was a ruckus in the Parliament the next day. Nobody was convinced by the arguments of the Congressmen and their supporters who did not exactly justify this kind of uncivil language as there was nothing to justify since everything was so apparent. They almost came to blows. They tried to circumvent and even evade the issue. Instead they raked up other issues. They did not allow the Health Minister to reply to a question raised by Rahul as the commotion created by both sides led to adjournment.

This is not the first time that he has played this kind of a game with the Prime Minister. Once in the Parliament a few months ago he suddenly got up from his chair, walked towards the Treasury Benches and went and hugged the Prime Minister without any apparent rhyme or reason. The PM was taken by surprise and recovering from the shock he stood up and gave him a proper hug. Rahul Gandhi walked back to his seat and looked at his colleagues like JyotiradityaScindia and others only to give them a wink. It was a very puerile joke and one did not expect it from his lineage. 

His is the fourth generation of Nehru family in Indian politics but never has such disrespect to other members of Parliament or the members of parties in opposition been shown in the past by any of his predecessors in the family. Jawaharlal Nehru was respected by all – whether in the government or in the opposition. During Chinese debacle he came under tremendous pressure and even offered to resign. The people in the Congress, however, told him very politely that the Party would decide when it was time for him to go but at that point of time it was the Defense Minister Krishna Menon who had to go. Never an impolite word was uttered by anybody in the government or the Opposition. But those times were different when people, especially politicians, perhaps were more gentle and polite - more civilized.

Rahul has had this immaturity displayed every time and almost everywhere. The party that he belongs to somehow has generated among its members such an intense hatred for the party in power that it comes out in their words and deeds every time. Not that the party in power is any less belligerent. It is needless to say that there is no love lost between the two parties and their constituents. Now that BJP is in power there is a sneaking feeling among the Congressmen that they – the BJP - are the usurpers. Having ruled for a few decades the Congress thinks that it has a rightful claim to India’s throne. Apparently, the dynasty that led the Congress also feels so. Hence, all the surviving members of the family who have been inducted in the Party are hostile to the ruling party and the PM and are out indulging in nit picking.

The PM Modi is actually the object of their ire and this is not of recent origin. The anger and hatred for him dates back to the days when Modi was heading the Gujarat government. There while campaigning during a Gujarat Assembly Election Mrs. Sonia Gandhi had described Modi as “Mautkasaudagar”, i,e, a merchant of death. The secular Congress tried its best to nail Modi for the deaths during the Gujarat riots but failed for lack of evidence. Modi was cleared of all charges even by the Supreme Court. But the ire and hatred lingered on. Perhaps those were magnified manifold in 2014 when Modi and BJP romped home at the General Elections. Unfortunately for them, Modi was returned to power with a thumping win in 2019. Congress was relegated so far back that on both the occasion it failed to qualify for being considered as the main opposition for nomination of its leader to the position of the Leader of the Opposition.No wonder unpleasant relations between the two continue and frequent undesirable barbs are thrown at each other.

In the recent Delhi State elections though BJP has been beaten hands down by the AamAdmi Party but the Congress has been relegated to irrelevance having been unable to win a single seat. Clearly Rahul Gandhi’s rants against the AAP and the BJP proved to be of no avail to the Congress. Looks like, the Congress is heading for self—destruction by persisting to choose its head from the Gandhi family.

Mercifully, Rahul Gandhi has openly told the people that he would not like to don the mantle of the president of Indian National Congress. He is reported to have repeated this three times. Hopefully, he means it and the Party will go looking for a new face not from the dynasty but from “the open market” so to say. The Grand Old Party has to realize that the Gandhi dynasty is progressively becoming too huge a weight for it so much so that because of it “power” is receding away from it. Even the induction latelyof Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has not made any tangible difference to its performance at the hustings.

Rahul, Sonia - Like mother like son

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Plummeting standards of political discourse in the country can surprisingly be largely attributed to its “Grand Old Party”, the Indian National Congress. Some years ago, its current president, Sonia Gandhi, called Narendra Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat, “maut ka saudagar” (merchant of death), hinting at his alleged role in the Gujarat communal riots of 2002. She, as the head of her supposedly secular party only had in mind the violence of Hindu “communalists” forgetting that they were reacting to the Godhra carnage that preceded and provoked it. If innocent Muslims were killed by the rioting mobs, the killings in the railway coaches were premeditated and had been preceded by elaborate preparations and were perpetrated on equally innocent travellers. When Gujarat riots are mentioned the killings in Godhra are hardly ever mentioned. In my opinion, these two tragic and unsavoury events should be mentioned in the same breath otherwise it wouldn’t be secular enough.

All that, however, is beside the point. What we came out to discuss was the plummeting standards of political discourse. Looks like, Sonia Gandhi threw the first stone, so to say. Now, years later, her son has made a similar goofy statement abusing the current prime minister in very crude terms. During one of his political campaigns in Uttar Pradesh he was reported to have said that Narendra Modi, the current prime minister, was hiding behind the blood of “jawans” (soldiers who were killed in the Uri attack). He went on to accuse Modi of indulging in “dalali” (brokerage) of army men’s blood – hardly anyone knows what that ment.

Apparently he could not, as usual, express properly whatever he had in mind. Predictably, all hell broke loose and soon thereafter a series of press briefings had to be conducted by his Party to clarify the matter and justify whatever utterances he happened to make. Presumably, in order to make the briefings more effective the Congress President asked Kapil Sibbal, a senior member and a highly acclaimed lawyer to boot, to meet the press. Briefings were just to put across what the Vice President  of the Party Rahul Gandhi had intended to convey which he apparently failed to do, giving rise to a barrage of barbs. Numerous statements were issued on his statements which were generally construed as insult of the Forces in an effort to politically attack the Prime Minister. His accusations were somewhat surprising in the background of his appreciative remarks earlier when he said that the surgical strike was the first PM-like action of Modi.

Nonetheless, the statements came in for adverse comments by political parties which condemned it as an effort to insult the “Army’s valour”. All round denunciation of his remarks came not only from Amit Shah, current president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, even Arvind Kejrival, no admirer of Narendra Modi, too criticized it. That the Army’s sacrifices and bravery was described as “Khoon ki dalali” was severely criticised by the Delhi chief minister. Also the Nationalist Congress Party president and a former Congressman, Sharad Pawar, too disapproved of Rahul Gandhi’s remarks about Modi Government “profiteering” from the blood spilt by the soldiers.

Even the greatest sycophant of Sonia Gandhi and Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad Yadav strongly criticized Rahul Gandhi’s remarks. He said Rahul failed to put across his views in a proper manner. However much Kapil Sibbal may have tried to justify the outburst of Rahul his pleadings did not convince anybody. He knew it and the Congress Party too knew it. Rahul had indulged in some shooting of the mouth out of his visceral hatred for Narendra Modi and that was clear. He hardly has any control over his thought process and much less on his expression. With his hatred for Modi and BJP he gets carried away when he occupies a pulpit and wants to hit both of them hard even if that happens to be uncivil and crude.

Attacking Modi seems to be a pastime with him. Modi, perhaps, presents a larger than life presence to him in front of which he finds himself far too diminutive – which, in fact, he seems to be. He is a reluctant politician and seems to have no mettle for it. His inferiority complex, regardless of the boost given to him by his mother and her sycophants, apparently, does not allow him to climb up to the political stature that his status in his party demands. All said and done, he is unequal to the job that has been chosen for him by his mother and the party over which she presides.

 Ever since Modi formed the government on his own steam, Rahul has been trying to nibble at him. With the kind of majority that Modi mustered at the hustings in 2014 he never had any worries and has consistently ignored Rahul’s jibes. Having no issues, Rahul started with the bogey of Modi’s suit worth Rs 10 lakhs (Rs. one million) that was a gift from one of his admirers. Modi wore it perhaps only once when Obama was in India and then had it auctioned where it fetched Rs. 4 crore (Rs. forty million). Then he started a campaign to run down Modi’s government calling it “suit boot ki sarkar” (a government of suited and booted gentlemen) and went to town telling people that such a government would do nothing for the poor. In the process, he would claim that he and his party men work only for the poor whereas this government worked merely for the rich. He clean forgot his grandmother’s slogan of “garibi hatao” (eliminate poverty) adopted more than forty years ago which was a fraud played on the people. Poverty continued to prevail as her government promoted nothing but corruption. Her daughter in-law much later had to initiate a poverty alleviation programme in 2004 through the newly installed United Progressive Alliance government which enacted Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

Rahul Gandhi had also been criticizing Modi’s foreign trips telling the people that while the prime minister goes visiting foreign countries farmers continue to commit suicide at home. He made it appear as if the farmers’ suicides could be attributed to the prime minister’s absences abroad.  This was nothing but another way of running down the prime minister. One does not know whether he found a corner to hide when the reports in the press indicated that messages were received promptly after the Uri attack from the heads of most of the governments of the countries that Modi visited. During his trips abroad he developed personal relations with the heads of states/governments particularly of the West. No prime minister earlier was ever able to forge such close personal relationships with the leaders of the First World as also those of the Third World.

Despite his illustrious lineage Rahul has never been able to attain the heights of his elders in the family. His grandfather, Feroze Gandhi, was a remarkable parliamentarian and he had such guts that he could take on even his own father in-law Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister. He could do that because of his political acumen, innate ability, tenacity and integrity. Somehow, Rahul lacks all that and yet he is being made to strut around in the country’s political firmament as a political leader. His is not politics; his forte appears to be in slinging mud at those who happen to be in power.

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*Photo from internet