Not
enough attention has been paid to the visuals of Congress President Rahul
Gandhi playing with his mobile phone for 24 long minutes during the President’s
address to Parliament. Was Gandhi being the kid that some Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders believe
he still is, or was he deliberately doing so to insult the President of India
with entitled disdain?
Having
been a member of Parliament for over 15 years, Rahul Gandhi is fully aware that
at least one camera is deployed to capture his every move and gesture inside
the august House. So it cannot be that he did not know that the visuals
would be telecast by every channel into every Indian home. Fresh from another
unprecedented rout which has reduced Congress to a shocking 23 seats outside
Kerala and Tamil Nadu, a personal defeat in Amethi and a ‘victory’ gifted by
Muslim League in Wayanad, why did Rahul Gandhi want to be seen exhibiting the
kind of arrogance that he showed when he publicly humiliated Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh, when the latter was on a foreign tour?
When
Congress won a second term in 2009, there was a lot of buzz about Gandhi becoming
a minister for a couple of years, before occupying the PM’s chair. As the
subsequent slap to his Prime Minister showed, Rahul Gandhi—like his mother—saw
Dr Manmohan Singh as no more than one of his many employees, serving under whom
was unthinkable. The same attitude informed his relationship with Presidents
Pratibha Patil and Pranab Mukherjee. President Kovind had to be shown his place
too, and through it a warning conveyed to Congress leaders that they should
remain In their place, resignation after rout notwithstanding.
Rahul
Gandhi, many believe, is a messed-up—and therefore dangerous—by-product of the
marriage of dynastic Indian entitlement and White fundamentalist contempt for
everything Indian.
As
the great-grandson of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and son of Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul
has grown up believing that he has a divine right to rule India and Indians. As
a result, he considers himself superior to and above every non-Family Indian
political leader. In power or not, he expects Congress leaders, age and
appointment irrespective, to pay obeisance to him, and non-Congress leaders to
put him on a hallowed exclusive pedestal.
As
the grandson of Mussolini’s Colonel Stefano Maino and son of Edvige Antonia
Albina Maino, Rahul Gandhi manifestly sees India through the eyes of a White
man who thinks nothing of India and Indians, and believes, with missionary
zeal, that he is here to get Dalits out of the Hindu fold—escape velocity of
Jupiter, missionary visas, foreign funds—and to so demonise and emaciate other
Hindus—Hindu terror, CVB, intolerance, majoritarianism—that they meekly
submit, once again, to be ruled by ‘minorities’, as they were till 1947.
His
mother, it must be mentioned, remained an Italian citizen, even though she was
living in the house of India’s Prime Minister, till 1983, and became an Indian
passport holder only when her own husband came within a step of becoming PM.
She learnt Hindi only after his death, and only because she couldn’t do without
the poison of power that literally fell into her lap. And it is from
her, as he admitted in an old interview to Sagarika Ghose, that Rahul Gandhi
learnt about India during his formative years, when his father was busy and
mostly away.
So when he uses BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Singh as key targets of attack, it probably flows from an irreconcilable ideological hate, and not from the politics and values he inherited from his father and paternal grandmother.
It is not entirely a coincidence that while some leaders of Congress speak about building shelters for cows if their party comes to power, Rahul Gandhi not only
takes pictures with Congressmen who publicly slaughter cows to hurt Hindus, but
also does not speak up for their religious sentiments, or for implementation of
laws banning cow slaughter. Nor is he ever seen with Hindu victims of cow
smugglers.
On the contrary, he has repeatedly spoken about the
right of people to slaughter cows for food, even if it means flouting the laws
enacted, ironically, mostly by his own party before it passed into his Italian
mother’s hands. It is also not a coincidence that ‘Beef Festivals’ were
organised brazenly in various parts of India, Delhi included, when he and his
mother were ruling India.
Rahul’s
latest tweet on Yoga epitomises this visceral hatred.
On
the day the whole world was celebrating Yoga, India’s timeless selfless gift to
humanity, one would have expected Rahul Gandhi to at least remain silent, if he
could not bring himself to say something positive about it as an Indian. But,
no, he had to let his bile flow. This was not a tweet by a politician; it was frustrated
loser tweeting, riled by visuals of millions of Indians renewing their connect
with an ancient Hindu practice that enables individuals to achieve physical, mental and spiritual
well-being—and more—souls intact and unsold.
That
he is not bright is clear as daylight, but what is evidently not so is that
Rahul Gandhi is not a harmless simpleton brimming with love. It doesn’t really
hurt him when people call him ‘dumb’, ‘pappu’, ‘budhu’ etc. A simple man with
heart of gold can always move people to vote for him, particularly if the main
opponent is not as brilliant and rooted and trustworthy as Modi is.
So
while making fun of ‘pappu’ is a good pastime, it has the effect of concealing
the oppressive dynastic entitlement and an alien ideological hatred that
defines the man, and makes light of the havoc he will ruthlessly create—Tukde
Gang in the vanguard — should he ever drink the intoxicating poison of power
again.
Never
forget the danger, and never dismiss Rahul Gandhi lightly.
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