It is not just Rahul Gandhi, but his Mummy who is behaving as if she once more rules India. (PTI)
Feb 23, 2025 14:11 IST First published on: Feb 23, 2025 at 07:00 IST
There are weeks in which I feel that Indian politics is as befuddling as a bad Bollywood film. This is one of them. Let me explain in detail why I find myself bewildered by what transpired in the week gone by. There was a remarkable reversal of roles between the BJP and the Congress party that you may have missed. Having cut my political teeth in the days when Indira Gandhi was so obsessed with the ‘foreign hand’ that foreign correspondents wrote satirical poems about how if anything bad happened in India — floods, famine, drought — you must always look for the ‘foreign hand’.
Last week, it was the BJP that seemed to become obsessed with the foreign hand on account of a comment made by Donald Trump. He said that one reason why he had shut down USAID was because it was spending money foolishly, like giving India $21 million to increase voter turnout during last year’s Lok Sabha election. This was pounced upon by BJP leaders and spokesmen as evidence that George Soros was (yet again) trying to replace Narendra Modi with Rahul Gandhi. What USAID has to do with Soros is something I have not yet worked out, but the BJP has become as obsessed with this aged billionaire as Mrs Gandhi once was with the ‘foreign hand’.
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This newspaper reported on its front page last week that the money did not come to India but went, instead, to Bangladesh. In any case, my limited point is that a country that hopes to sit at the high table with the ‘viksit’ countries of the world must stop being paranoid about the foreign hand. In the times when Mrs Gandhi saw the foreign hand everywhere, we did not aspire to ever become a developed country. We knew we were always going to be Third World (and third rate?), so the prime minister’s only aspiration was to remove poverty. ‘Gharibi Hatao’ was the mantra.
Then, as I watched Delhi’s new Chief Minister being sworn in with pomp and ceremony last week, I noticed another reversal. On that stage in the Ramlila Maidan stood the BJP’s mightiest leaders, but although this was clearly a show of strength, the supercilious arrogance that defined these leaders before the Lok Sabha election was gone. This change has been obvious in the Prime Minister’s demeanour ever since he failed to return to power with a full majority, but now it seems as if other BJP leaders have understood that Indian voters despise all signs of arrogance in their elected representatives. Has this happened because of that stern message Mohan Bhagwat sent after the Lok Sabha election? Or has it happened because there was serious introspection? I do not know. But change there seems to be.
Since the Lok Sabha election, the BJP has won elections in Haryana and Maharashtra, but winning Delhi was special because this victory came after nearly three decades. The BJP now rules 14 Indian states and its National Democratic Alliance controls 19 altogether. In those old days, when the Prime Minister boasted of winning more than 400 seats and said he had been sent by God himself to save India, there was a conceit in him that seemed to filter into the veins of the BJP. Now that he shows more humility than before, this message seems to have gone home to the party’s other leaders, and its rank and file. Is this why the BJP has made such an astonishing recovery that an India Today poll shows that if a general election were held today, it would win a full majority on its own?
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The Congress party, for its part, has been showing signs of arrogance and entitlement that often make their leader sound as if he has already become prime minister. Rahul Gandhi has been strutting about like a peacock ever since he doubled his party’s seats in the Lok Sabha and managed enough to finally become Leader of the Opposition. But, instead of showing grace and humility in his new role, he continues to make charges of personal corruption against the Prime Minister. And he makes them with the petulance of a schoolboy who has failed to get the marks he expected. Notice that from Modi’s very successful visit to the United States the only thing that Rahul found to comment on was that Modi failed to answer a question about Adani.
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It is not just Rahul Gandhi, but his Mummy who is behaving as if she once more rules India. When asked to comment on the President’s address to Parliament, she said it was so long and boring that the President herself seemed exhausted by the end of it. ‘She looked tired, poor thing.’ Not wise to speak this way about the President of India, but not good for Soniaji’s own image. It makes her sound as if she believes she is entitled to speak this way. It exhibits that same old arrogance that people were totally fed up with at the end of her reign as the kingmaker who could appoint and sack the prime minister.
Until the Lok Sabha election, it was Narendra Modi who had such an exalted sense of power that he elevated himself from mere mortal to messenger of God. That did not go down well with the voters. Recent elections indicate that the Gandhi family’s arrogance is not popular either.
