Dubai: Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi’s speech, made at a function in Vigyan Bhavan, on National Awareness Camp for Scheduled Castes Empowerment, has set India’s social media ablaze.
The lecture which was made to the Dalits, and reflected on how they should empower themselves, had references to astrophysics wherein Gandhi, who is tipped to be the Congress party’s candidate for prime minister during the 2014 general elections, reflected on the empowerment of the downtrodden and their rise out of it akin to the phenomenon of escape velocity — or the speed than an object needs to be travelling to break free of a planet or moon’s gravity.
The analogy seemed to have missed its mark with the Dalits, but hit the bullseye as far as India’s cartoonists, satirists and political analysts are concerned — Gandhi is now the social media’s favourite whipping boy and the evidence advocates that he may have scored a political own goal.
“The escape velocity for earth is 11.2 km/sec while that of Jupiter is 60 km/sec. In India we have the concept of caste. There is an escape velocity here also. For a Dalit to achieve success the escape velocity required is that of Jupiter. More effort is needed,” he stressed.
The scion of the Gandhi family stated that if the movement for escape velocity has to be taken forward it needs the participation of lakhs of Dalit leaders.
Amidst the brouhaha in the media veteran Congressman Mani Shankar Aiyar tried to put Gandhi’s interesting foray into the world of astrophysics in perspective by offering a simplistic explanation.
“From what I heard, my basic understanding is that the Dalits need to remember and recognise that their liberation from oppression and the promotion of their welfare and development has, for over 100 years, been a principle concern of the Congress party,” said Aiyar, speaking to Gulf News.
“That the liberation of India was linked by Gandhi to the liberation of the Dalit community and the whole concept of reservations, in proportion to their population, was an idea that Gandhi pushed from his prison bed in Yerawada Jail at the time of his fast unto death. He wanted to integrate the community into the larger Indian society.
“In essence I think Gandhi was referring to a huge number of programmes organised by the Congress for the benefit of the Dalit. He made the point that the Congress has a larger history of awareness of the Dalit’s problems than any other party. That much had been done and was there to do and so the Congress is the party to trust when it came to their best interests.”
Dismissing Gandhi’s discourse as the diatribe of an individual who had lost his senses was Subramaniam Swamy, President of the Janata Party, who’s organisation had merged on August 11 with the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP).
Speaking to Gulf News, Swamy launched a scathing attack on the Congress vice-president saying, “It is the speech of a scatterbrained person. Only someone who has been addicted to drugs can make a speech like that. What does he mean by Jupiter’s escape velocity? The man has no comprehension, or knowledge.”
Continuing his attack Swamy said, ‘In any other country he would have been certified for a psychiatric test. Please don’t ask me anymore about him because I could give you answers that are not fit to print.”
According to Swamy, “He (Gandhi) talks foreign, looks foreign and speaks foreign. The media has hyped him to be a successor to Manmohan Singh. The country needs knowledgeable and gutsy people. Singh has knowledge but no guts, but this guy is simply mad! He has never been seen in crisis points, never meets the press because he doesn’t know what to say. He is a caricature of the Nehru family.”
Equally unforgiving was Rajiv Pratap Rudy, a general secretary of the BJP. Speaking to the Gulf News, he said, “He (Gandhi) can talk and make references to astrophysics but he must also answer that out of 64 years of congress rule in the country can he produce some calculations on the achievements of the party’s last 54 years? It is paradoxical that a man who comes from the Congress party and Gandhi family should talk of Dalits now when they had five decades to address the state of poverty and emancipation of the Dalits.”
Gandhi, according to Rudy, “Is disconnected from reality. He talks in abstracts. He comes forward makes a statement and goes away and then comes again to make another statement. There is no sense of continuity, or coherence, with him. We have never heard him speak on corruption on the 2G scam or the Coalgate scam. Such statements, made in isolation, reflects his state of mind and maturity.”
Not content to let the opposition walk away with the last word, Aiyar stated emphatically, “The BJP are twits who twitter. They are not worthy of a reply from intelligent concerned people. Rudy’s mother gave him his name because he has a penchant to be rude.”
The politician’s views notwithstanding, social media may, however, have the last word on this issue.
