Bharat Jodo Yatra’s Binaries – Can Rahul Gandhi answer?

Rahul Gandhi embarked upon the Bharat Jodo Yatra some months ago from Kanya Kumari. Throughout Bharat Jodo yatra Rahul Gandhi has been drawing binaries: ‘They are for hate, we are for love’ — ‘we want to unite, they want to divide’, sometimes drawing parallels from Mahabharata, he states, pitiably, as if he and his family were the Pandavas, he calls his political opponents (BJP) the Kauravas. He also asked the crowd, unmindful of the anachronism, “Did Pandavas do demonetisation/notebandi? Did they impose GST?” Later, he himself replied “NO”, as if Pandavas had been with him, backing his pet theories (of both policies being wrong). He took all Kalyug things to Thretha or Dwapar Yug comparisons. What is this flip-flop? The Supreme Court declared the other day that the Government at the Centre has the legitimate authority to carry out demonetisation. Yet, Rahul Gandhi repeats DEMO to be wrong ad nauseam and ad infinitum.  

If what all Rahul Gandhi said about him being the champion of love was true, the people of India would not have rejected the Congress party so badly in the last parliamentary elections. When it was in office, drunk with power, the Congress party had set all bad precedents for the country. Now, it is crying hoarse that others are at fault. Rahul Gandhi’s frequent attacks on the BJP and RSS are not ‘messages of love’ which he claims he wants to promote. The Congress, under Rahul Gandhi, thinks that it is the self-appointed custodian of “love”. “Love” is a deceptive thing. Let that be explained. A lover of the right kind brings to light his noble and hidden qualities (before the beloved to impress her), not his normal self. When Rahul Gandhi was on foreign jaunts, his party leaders needed him and his help. That time he was callous, never showed up nor helped them with love and kind words. Now in this new avatar on the roads, he seems to be caring and caressing. Which Rahul Gandhi should one believe?   

On the political chess board, Rahul Gandhi has lost his (or his party’s) war-horses, elephants, camels and so many foot soldiers. Saying that they went because they did not share Congress’s ideology or because they aspired to positions is a futile argument; in politics, it is not wrong to have aspirations. His present lieutenants: Jairam Ramesh, K.C. Venugopal, Randeep Singh Surjewala et.al. have recently been nominated M.P.s in the Rajya Sabha. In what way are they doing altruistic service? They have no capacity to win direct elections. They are at the mercy of the Nehru-Gandhi-family i.e. the high command. That they folly him in the yatra only means that they are the satisfied lot politically.   

The left-oriented journalists and columnists who cursed the Congress party for its inertia all these years of Modi rule are now slowly joining the Congress fold. For a very long i.e. since independence, the Congress party nurtured them and gave them a place at the high table. After the regime change in 2014, they thought the success of the BJP to be momentary and never expected it to stay in power for so long. Now, they hug the Congress party for survival once again. However, today’s India is different. Indians nowadays are more aware of global and national realities.

For all the ills and animosities that prevail in the country, Rahul Gandhi should not squarely blame the Government at the Centre or the RSS. This is a phenomenon noticed all over the world. Let him look at his maternal home Italy, where the far-right party of Giorgia Meloni, carrying the legacy of the Fascist past came to rule. The U.S. is a polarized country. You find everywhere extremist and hate-filled messaging from people of diverse ideologies. Rahul Gandhi’s narrative that the world is hunky dory whereas India alone has a hate-filled atmosphere is simply not true. Under Congress’s rule, the opinion of the elite (by virtue of birth and social status) prevailed. The other views were hushed up. Social media has opened Pandora’s box. The frustrated common people (because they have no control over their condition unlike the elite) have started pouring out their convictions. They feel they have been repressed for several years by proponents of so-called western liberal views, which they don’t share. Hence, they are fault-finding with the elite sections of society. They do not know the art of nuance. If this is hate and if the Congress Party thinks it is due to the folly of the present dispensation, let them fight it in elections. Why use these shibboleths: we’re for love, they’re for hate and so on?

Let Rahul Gandhi enunciate clearly what his party’s position is electorally. Does he want to bring back failed socialism into the country? Does he want to penalize the two-three Udyogpathees he keeps mentioning? Can he guarantee from his side, that the extreme ideologues of his party won’t give ‘hate-speeches’? There is no definition of hate speech in India. The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu reminds us that “It is not the clay the potter throws that gives the jar its usefulness, but the space within.”

References:

https://www.deccanherald.com/video/national/pandava-didn-t-implement-gst-demonetisation-rahul-gandhi-1179534.html