VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
On Sunday, Ramlila Ground in the
heart of Delhi saw the “relaunch”
of Rahul Gandhi. Those who had thought that the new version of the scion of the
Nehru-Gandhi dynasty would be better and faster than the previous one came out
thoroughly disappointed after the rally. Sabbatical of almost two months and
Buddhist style vipassana, tantra or whatever mysterious cult he practiced over
the last few weeks, proved to be of no use as he used the same jaded language
and took up the same issue on which the voters had rejected his party in the
May 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
The anti economic reform rhetoric
and leftist agenda which he spoke from the dais was exactly he had been
speaking uninterruptedly for the last few years. What was new in this? So the launch of Rahul Gandhi version 2.0.0
seemed entirely uneventful and bereft of anything new and different. We had
been repeatedly told by a battery of Congress spokespersons and those who swear
by the dynasty that the new version of Gandhi would be different from the
earlier one as he was into some introspection about the party and its policies
and come out with the proverbial magic wand for its revival.
Will they now come out and say
that the sabbatical, holidays, sightseeing; pleasure trip… or whatever you call
his absence has actually benefitted the party?
Why has Rahul Gandhi become the
source of biggest embarrassment for the family-run-and-controlled party? The
answer is not far to seek. He is simply not interested in politics, not ready
for the top job forced on him, not fit to take political responsibilities which
his mother and others want him to shoulder. It’s like a great cricketer forcing
his son to become a cricketer even though he wants to be become a rockstar or a
writer. It’s like a classical vocalist who wants his son to become like him but
the son is hellbent on becoming a fashion designer. It’s like someone forcing a
journalist like me in his early 40s to become a marathon runner. Sonia Gandhi
may be a great political strategist as the arrangement with Manmohan Singh
showed, the longest serving Congress President in its history but that does not
mean that because he is her son, Rahul too would be as “successful”.
I don’t understand why the
Congress, particularly Sonia Gandhi, doesn’t realise that Rahul is simply not
cut out to be a politician. He could be anything — a great yoga master, a
Formula One driver, a Buddhist master excelling in the finer techniques of
meditation, someone who can have a great control on his breath and is excellent
in pranayama, a fitness freak and instructor and may even start lessons in
positive thinking or giving sermons on religion and spirituality on television.
His career, priority and interests lie somewhere else. But Congress wants him
to become the party president, an election winning poster boy of the party,
someone who inspires youth and is voted to power. I am sorry but they are
betting on the wrong person. Rahul has been and would always remain a reluctant
politician.
What we saw at Ramlila Ground was
paid Congress crowd, hardly interested in what Rahul or party chief Sonia
Gandhi spoke from the stage. From Haryana and Punjab ,
busloads of people were brought in the national Capital, paid for missing their
daily job, provided food, transport and entertainment allowance. It’s anybody’s
guess how many of them were farmers.
Ironically the farmers of both
Haryana and Punjab are ruing the loss of their wheat crop due to vagaries of
nature and trying to somehow convince the procurement agencies that the poor
quality of the crop be overlooked while being procured. That is their worry, not
Land
So when Rahul spoke against the
Land Acquisition Bill after his nearly two-month absence from the country, it
seemed like a fly by night operator who was forced by the circumstances to say
something in which he was neither interested nor convinced. It was like a
professional golfer giving lessons on fish farming in a village, it was like a
priest in a temple who has been forced to dance in a discotheque. The assembled
crowd at Ramlila Ground endured the speeches for a while, had plenty of water
and then preferred to go back to the safe confines of the buses and vehicles
which had brought them to the venue from different places in Haryana, Punjab
and Rajasthan.
It’s not surprising that Congress
is vertically divided on the name of Rahul Gandhi as the new Congress
President. For the first time perhaps, Congress leaders are fighting amongst
themselves and issuing contradicting statements on the name of Rahul. In
Punjab, state Congress President Partap Singh Bajwa and former Chief Minister
Capt Amarinder Singh are abusing each other left right and centre in public
almost every day. While Bajwa wants Rahul as party President, Capt Amarinder
wants Sonia to continue.
In Haryana, State party chief
Ashok Tanwar and CLP leader Kiran Chaudhry want Rahul, former Chief Minister
Bhupinder Singh Hooda swears by his mother.
This is practically the situation
in almost all states where Congress has any semblance of presence. A comic
situation has emerged where a faction is supporting Rahul for its survival and
the other Sonia, forgetting that no one is going anywhere in the family run
organisation. They are stabbing each other but raising the slogans of Rahul
Zindabad or Sonia Zindabad, to camouflage their bitter factional fight. Capt
Amarinder knows that Bajwa has the confidence of Rahul and would not be removed
from the post which he badly wants. So, you see him saying that Rahul is not
experienced enough for the top job. He knows for sure that if Rahul becomes the
party chief, he would have to seek VRS and head for his summer palace in Chail,
Himachal Pradesh.
Instead of looking for ways and
means to rejuvenate itself and look forward for the challenges ahead, the badly
battered and bruised Congress has reduced itself to a laughing stock. Of
course, Rahul is one big reason for this.
He has become a butt of jokes on
social media. In fact, on WhatsApp and Twitter, most of the jokes are at the
cost of the Congress Vice President. How can the party not see the writing on
the wall and keep forcing Rahul to accept a job in which he has little or no
interest or at best only a part time interest as he has not yet found what
interests him the most.
Former Delhi Chief Minister
Sheila Dikshit has already spoken about this and so has her son and former East
Delhi MP Sandeep Dikshit. For the first time, Congressmen and women are speaking
out against someone from the dynasty. This has never happened in the past. No
one spoke against Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi or Sonia Gandhi being
still a member of the party.
This is happening for the first
time in the post independence history of the Congress. Is this political
churning of a new kind, only time will reveal. But what is certain is that
Congress is riding on two boats at the same time and that only leads to
disaster. (April 20, 2015 )
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