Quite frankly, it is unbecoming of a leader of a national Party to discuss domestic issues on foreign soil. Yet this is what India’s Leader of the Opposition did during his recent trip to the US. by KUMKUM CHADHA
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has done it again. He has put his foot in his mouth and that too on foreign soil.
Gandhi recently visited the US: his first to the US as Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
Quite expectedly Gandhi made news: some good, some bad.
His underlying message: Congress spreads love, not hatred: a leaf straight out of the mohabbat ki dukan book so to speak.
During his Bharat Jodi yatra last year, Gandhi had said that he would moot for a shop of love in the market of hatred: “Nafrat ke bazaar mein mohabbat ki dukan khol raha hoon” to quote him.
Yet during his recent US visit, Gandhi while professing love actually spewed venom.
So, what did he exactly say?
For starters, he targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his claim of speaking to God directly: “When he said that, we knew that we had actually blown him apart” Gandhi said adding that it was, for Modi, a “psychological collapse”. Gandhi did not stop here.
He also took on the BJP and RSS and their misunderstanding the concept of India.
In this context, Gandhi used an interesting analogy: one of a course-by-course meal.
“When you have lunch here, (read the US) you get first course, second course…we don’t get that, we get a thali, and everything placed in it…it’s a jumble and every food has the same value…so this idea of mixing and merging is in India,” he said. The BJP and RSS, Gandhi said, treat India as a “bunch of separate things”.
On rhetoric, Gandhi may have scored but on making substantive points he hit a new low.
Take for instance his comment on Sikhs: “The fight is about whether a Sikh is going to be allowed to wear his turban in India or a kada in India. Or he, as a Sikh, is going to be able to go to a Gurudwara… And not just for him, for all religions.” Gandhi said.
The statement is neither factual nor justified. If anything, the BJP government has reached out to the Sikh community and addressed its concerns.
So, when Union Minister Hardeep Puri said that the Sikhs have felt “safer and more honored” under the BJP regime than any other, he was not off the mark.
As for Gandhi, he should have steered clear of a contentious and emotional issue because it reopened wounds that the Congress Party had allegedly inflicted on the Sikhs.
In 1984, after Sikh bodyguards gunned down Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Delhi witnessed a blood bath wherein Sikhs were targeted.
Rahul’s remarks not only gave fresh ammunition to the BJP but also raked an issue which has yet to find a closure.
The BJP was quick to point out that the only time when the Sikhs felt insecure and threatened was when “Rahul Gandhi’s family was in power”.
It was an obvious reference to the pogrom carried out against the Sikhs when Rajiv Gandhi had stepped in as Prime Minister, hours after his mother’s assassination.
Prominent Congress leaders were, then, in the eye of a storm for organizing and instigating mobs and actually arming them to attack the Sikh community. There is evidence of Sikhs being pulled out of their homes, beaten and burnt alive.
The organized carnage led Sikhs to run for cover and for years on they lived in fear. It is also well known that many Sikh men cut their hair and stopped wearing turbans and karas for fear of being identified and targeted.
So, if Rahul Gandhi were to turn the pages of History he would know that the Congress Party’s hands are smeared in blood.
At this point one needs to stop and ask who is advising Gandhi? Why is he raking up issues that are controversial? And in this case also erroneous because the turban and kara are not issues plaguing the mind in Modi’s regime. If anything, it was the hijab. And that too was two years ago, when the BJP state government in Karnataka had banned girls and women from wearing a hijab to college. Therefore, Gandhi needs to press the refresh button before shooting off his mouth.
Back home, Gandhi has played his cards rather well. During the recently concluded general elections, his Samvidhan khatre mein hain slogan, Constitution is in danger, resonated with the people along with other issues like the caste census.
What grabbed eyeballs was Gandhi carrying a pocket version of the Constitution of India, flashing it frequently. During the election campaigns, this worked like nothing else did.
Buoyant with confidence that his strategy has worked and in one sense uprooted the BJP, Gandhi is going all guns and firing in all directions. And needless to say, he is also succeeding in vanquishing the enemy.
Against this backdrop it would not be wrong to say that much of the credit of Opposition’s “good showing” in the elections and the drubbing that the BJP got is thanks to Gandhi’s tireless and aggressive campaigning.
Even as Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, he has taken on Prime Minister Modi and hit where it hurts the most.
On that count, Gandhi is kind of unstoppable. Not only has he reinvented himself but has emerged as one who can occupy the Opposition space effectively.
But one must stop here. Even if Gandhi were to nurture ambitions of grabbing the top job, he has a long way to go. As things appear, the toss up is not between Gandhi and Modi. The BJP may have failed to secure a majority on its own and Brand Modi lost a bit of its sheen, but this turn of events should not be interpreted as a space that Gandhi will easily occupy.
Rhetoric is one part but the business of governance, quite another. Were the people of India to look for an alternative to Modi, they are unlikely to hand over the destiny of the country to Gandhi.
The electorate may see him as an ideal candidate to take on a government but he may not be their natural choice to lead the country as Prime Minister.
For that, they would back a leader who is politically mature, understands governance and has the vision to take India forward. As of now, Gandhi falls terribly short on all these counts. When it comes to attacking Modi and the BJP, he is at his best but on the issues of policy and development, there are huge gaps.
That apart, Gandhi also needs lessons in diplomacy. Being a politician and that too one from the Opposition does not give him the license to say what he wants and whenever but he too needs to draw a line somewhere.
Quite frankly, it is unbecoming of a leader of a national Party to discuss domestic issues on foreign soil.
Yet this is what Gandhi did during his recent trip to the US. He not only slammed the Government but criticized Prime Minister Modi, conveniently forgetting the dignity that should be accorded to the office of the Prime Minister of India.
So even if Gandhi’s comments on foreign soil are going viral, one must accept that in this tirade, Gandhi has compromised the dignity of the country.
Every mature politician knows that political feuds are best settled at home and not on foreign soil. Equally, it is the responsibility of every Indian, particularly elected representatives, to showcase the country’s positives rather than present its seamy side. One must remember that politics and nationalism are not interchangeable. Either Gandhi is oblivious of the golden rule or he deliberately chose to ignore it. Either way, he crossed a line.
