From Gandhi-Mukt Congress to Congress-Mukt Bharat
KS Muralidharan
Rahul Gandhi may have failed to swing votes for his party, but he sure has an entire eco-system batting for him, every time he bowls a no ball, or a wide, edges, misses, is beaten, clean bowled or is out hit-wicket — like how he has outed himself in his insinuation against Modi, for which he now faces a two year jail sentence and has lost his MP status.
Commenting on this, Swaminathan S. Aiyar wrote, ‘If Rahul is guilty, could I be in trouble for writing this column?” in the Sunday Times of India dated March 26.
Well, Aiyar is no media James Bond and need not worry about getting into trouble, excepting for some harmless noise in the social media.
Someone somewhere hurls an abuse at Narendra Modi directly or indirectly every day in the mainstream media, online media and social media, but all this is a shining example of free speech for the anti-Modi eco-system. So, to hint at free speech being under attack now under PM Modi as Aiyar does, is an indisputably fake show of fear and false bravado.
Right and Wrong
Aiyar is right when he says ‘bad jokes must not lead to jail’. He has a point when he calls for defamation cases to be civil and not criminal. But given his eloquent silence on the zillion times Modi has been abused, this is only providing cover for Rahul Gandhi’s misfiring antics.
Imagine if it was a BJP leader instead of Rahul Gandhi who had been punished by the court for some hate speech, the same worthies in the media would have risen as one to hail the court for showing spunk and speaking truth to power.
Will Tata’s exit play out for Adani too?
Rahul Gandhi’s show of defiance at his press meet only showcased his utter stupidity when he described Adani as corrupt, with his party’s two chief ministers Ashok Gehlot of Rajasthan and Bhupesh Baghel of Chattisgarh, on either side, the very states in which Adani has invested around one lakh crore!
Now, if opposition-ruled states chant the same tune because they feel it is the only way to run down Modi, what will happen if Adani decides to shift all his businesses to BJP-ruled states? It will end up as a bigger multi-state version of Tata’s exit from Bengal.
Will playing victim card backfire?
The funny thing is, the Congress has not shown any hurry to go on appeal and challenge the lower court’s verdict in the High court even though it concerns their supreme leader, unlike what they did in the case of their spokesperson, Pawan Khera who too made a mean remark on Modi. This can only mean that the idea is to play the victim card.
Is it going to work? Unlikely, because Rahul Gandhi is no Indira Gandhi, who masterfully used the imagery of a helplessly cornered old widow single-handedly battling the ruling Janata Party when she was jailed in 1978 and rode back to power.
The spate of staged protests by the Congress may quickly run out of gas and motivation, because Narendra Modi’s BJP is not Janata Party. Hate him as much as you want, but Modi knows how to connect with the people and more people trust him than they hate him, which explains why his popularity among the people continues to rise, despite an entire eco-system working tirelessly against him. Instead of public sympathy for Rahul Gandhi people may well be inclined to credit Modi for bringing the most powerful people to book.
Or, horror of horrors, is there a conspiracy within the Congress to keep the Gandhis out? Doubtful, for it is their destiny and in their DNA to swim or sink together. The Gandhi brand maybe on the wane, but without them, the party will disintegrate like a house of cards.
Another irony is that those very parties that were opposed to Congress have jumped to the support of Rahul Gandhi, like Arvind Kejriwal, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav. Perhaps they are covering their base, and booking advance support for themselves when they are in a similar situation in the near future!
The days ahead for Congress are going to be the toughest phase in its history, with the Gandhis in retreat, as Sonia Gandhi has health issues and is virtually retired, Rahul Gandhi faces possible jail in addition to being out of electoral reckoning for a possible period of 8 years, and Priyanka Gandhi having come a cropper in UP and wherever she has taken the lead in campaigning.
Admittedly, political discourse is by its very nature more often than not dirty, diabolical and dubious. And Modi also may have made such statements. But no one felt hurt till now for those past statements? They are hurt only when Rahul Gandhi faces jail? And only now the clamor is being raised for decriminalizing defamation!
What now remains to be seen is whether a Gandhi Mukt Congress is the next fatal step in realizing the BJP’s dream of a Congress Mukt Bharat?