Many had noticed it, though only a few would have bothered to explore the full import of a split-second drama between mother and son on the lawns of 24, Akbar Road — the headquarters of the Congress party in New Delhi. It was May 16, 2014 — the day results were out for the general elections in India.
After having read out a rather staid, insipid and extremely short reaction to the poll drubbing, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, with son and party vice-president Rahul in tow, was about to make a quick departure, when a section of mediapersons sought more substantial sound bites from the person in charge of the Congress campaign.
Rahul acknowledged the crowd with a hint of a smile and was just about to stop by, perhaps for a question or two, though that was certainly not on the menu of his mother’s carefully choreographed one-way communication module for the afternoon’s apology for a ‘press meet’! Barely had Rahul stopped, did the Congress president issue an unspoken but iron-clad diktat to her son to simply follow her back into the office. All possibilities of a few quotable quotes nipped in the bud!
It all happened in an instant, but it did encapsulate the biggest malaise plaguing India’s oldest political outfit: An acute confidence deficit syndrome.
Winning or losing an election is just one chapter in a voluminous almanac of a political thesis whose final grade point average would be tabulated in terms of various other parameters, but Sonia’s inability — or reluctance — to let Rahul come on his own for even a few minutes before the national media spoke volumes about how haplessly the fortunes of India’s GOP were held hostage by the likes and dislikes of just one person.
That is why despite all the questions, doubts, mystery and jokes surrounding the Congress vice-president’s sudden decision to go on a sabbatical “for a few weeks” — with an all-important Budget Session of the parliament barely hours away — there is at least one positive that a die-hard Congress supporter can latch on to and that is perhaps, just perhaps, for the first time, Rahul has acted out of his own volition — chucking the party’s command chain straight out the window.
Even to the extent of embarrassing his mother! And there probably lies the bigger story. The cat has been let out of the bag by senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh, who, in an interview with Indian journalist Sagarika Ghose for the Times of India, said on Monday: “Rahul doesn’t need anyone. He is politically conscious and has a political mind, but since his mother has not been well, he does not want to impose his will on her because it will bring him into confrontation with her ...”
Time for introspection
Compare this with party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi’s fig-leaf of an excuse: Rahul Gandhi has requested the Congress president that he needs a few weeks’ time to “reflect both on recent events related to the party and its future course” as he believes that this “introspection” is vital for the party.
The point is if Rahul really wanted to have a break for chintan (brainstorm) and to “introspect” then he could have easily done so immediately after the general elections last May or even after his party’s scoreboard showed an ignominious zero in the Delhi assembly polls a few weeks back. Why “introspect” now with a wafer-thin Congress desperate to make some amends by raising the pitch from the Opposition bench during the Budget Session?
Moreover, Rahul himself was scheduled to lead an agitation on Wednesday at Jantar Mantar in the capital over the government’s ordinance on land acquisition. Is “introspection” so high on Rahul’s agenda that Sonia has granted him the privilege of a pregnant pause, knowing full well that the party is bound to face further embarrassment over such a decision, both inside and outside the parliament?
Be that as it may, the moot point hereon is how will this sudden sabbatical reflect on Rahul’s career graph?
Even if one assumes that this break is Rahul’s way of disapproving the way the party is being run; even if it is his way of taking up the cudgels against the entrenched old guard within the party; and even if it is his way of telling his mother that he too has a mind and would no longer be a mere rubber stamp or a letter head … the question still remains: Are we going to see a Rahul Gandhi 2.0 emerge from the shadows of dynastic politics, from the cocoon of an over-protective mother and the cushion of a haloed surname and step into the larger, more pragmatic realm of a new-age India where donning a Gandhi cap is certainly not the be all and end all of one’s political identity?
It is high time Rahul realises that in contemporary India, allegiance to a certain family name will no longer be enough to win elections. Nor will a dogged determination to cling on to a policy of handouts and freebies in the name of left-of-centre politics endear one to voters.
Having spent more than a decade in the rough and tumble, Rahul must have realised all that and so this sabbatical is more of a silent protest against his own party — most of all against his mother who has always preferred to have a ready script for him, never leaving any room for improvisation.
So Rahul, time to junk that formula-feed and order a la carte. The tab, either way, is on you!
