Tavleen Singh writes: Why it’s high time for Congress to come up with a new and convincing plan

In the same tweet, I also said that the BJP had thrown Rahul a lifeline by blaming George Soros for his rash comment about the takeover of all our institutions by the RSS. My own advice is that he find a grown-up to explain to him that repeatedly saying that the institutions of democracy are totally diminished amounts to an insult to India. And he makes it hard for us to understand why he wants to be Leader of the Opposition in such a shabby democracy.

If the Leader of the Opposition spent a moment mulling over his words before unleashing them upon the world, he would have noticed that nobody has been as good at demeaning our democratic institutions than his own family. Does he remember that his mother weakened the office of the prime minister by personally appointing men of her choice? Does he remember that Mummy’s National Advisory Council became far more powerful than the Cabinet of Dr Manmohan Singh? Or that he himself, publicly tore up an Ordinance passed by the government and declared that it was nonsense? And there is more.

As someone who got my first job in an Indian newspaper a month before Rahul’s granny declared the Emergency, I remember press censorship well. Like this newspaper, the one I worked in at the time was determined to defy Indira Gandhi’s rules so there were endless trips to the Press Information Bureau to get clearance even for apolitical stories. It was not just the media that was diminished as an institution, the whole of government was because it became clear very soon that Mrs Gandhi’s younger son was more powerful than any of her ministers. Going further back, someone needs to remind the LoP that it was said of Jawaharlal Nehru that he was a tree in whose shadow nothing could grow.

My point here is not to say that under Narendra Modi, India has suddenly become a place of liberal ideas and strong institutions, only that the template he has used to diminish democracy is one that was created long ago. If today it is RSS men and Hindutva types who can be found in our universities, courts and in the bureaucracy, this is perhaps because this template was also created long ago. The difference is only of ideology. So, we now have historians who do not hesitate to write in school textbooks that Islamic invaders came here and destroyed magnificent temples and ancient universities. Historians of ‘secular’ times chose to disguise these events for reasons of secularism. It was stupid to do this then and it is stupid now for Hindutva historians to go too far to the other extreme.

It is hard to understand why they need to do this at all. The millions of devout Hindus heading to the Maha Kumbh these days is proof that those who sought to spread Islam in India succeeded only partially. But I digress and I do not wish to. The one point I want to make this week is that Rahul Gandhi really needs to speak with more maturity about things as weighty as democracy and its institutions. There are those who believe that it is a miracle that India has remained democratic while countries on all sides of us have succumbed to martial law and totalitarian tyrants. Personally, I think that the roots of democracy have become stronger with every year of our journey as a modern, independent nation.

Indian voters have understood fully the power of their votes and when they see a political leader showing signs of megalomania or entitlement, they use their votes to remind him who the real boss is. So, when someone as significant as the Leader of the Opposition tells them that the institutions that hold up democracy in their country have been destroyed, he insults their intelligence and their faith. The way the Congress Party continues to lose elections is proof that this is not working even as a political strategy. It is time to come up with something new and more convincing.