In the Mahabharata, there is the story of Arjuna and how he came to be the best archer in the world. When asked to take aim at a bird, he saw neither the branch it was sitting on, nor its plumage. He could only see the eye of the bird. Such was the intensity of his focus and concentration. True, it also helped that a lower caste archer was asked to cut off his thumbs so as to ensure Arjuna's supremacy. Still, it is Arjuna's focus on the eye of the bird which India's Man of Destiny has adopted as his own political strategy.
It must be said, never in the history of democracy has one man caused so many hundreds of millions of people to change their votes over so long a period. It is the iron determination and unshakeable ideological faith of that same man which has ensured that the BJP will get a third term. I am not speaking of Narendra Modi. I am speaking of Rahul Gandhi. He is India's Man of Destiny. That destiny, however, is to yield to Bharat- which is a living breathing Nation of great aniquity. India is a geographical expression. The dynasty of the 'last Englishman to rule' it, can either quit or continue to die nasty.
True, Modi is an exceptional politician but would the BJP really have fielded him in 2014 if Rahul had shouldered aside Manmohan, after tearing up the latter's ordinance, and led his party into the 2014 elections as the sitting PM? I think not. Advani would have been allowed a last hurrah. Alternatively, if he was judged too old, Sushma Swaraj or Arun Jaitlery- seasoned Lok Sabha parliamentarians- would have nominated as the NDA's Prime Ministerial candidate. Why expose Modi to humiliation? He might lose Gujarat if he showed himself anxious for the top job. Look at what happened to Deve Gowda. Regional Chief Ministers, however successful, don't do well as Prime Ministers- at least that was the conventional wisdom till Modi won from Benares and became PM. But he wasn't running against anybody. Rahul had refused to step up to the plate but had also refused to let anybody else do so . It was a case of Modi vs Nobody.
Suppose Rahul had followed his father's example and taken charge of the Commonwealth Games as Rajiv had taken charge of the Asian Games. His popularity would have soared. Once he became PM, the voters would have felt they should 'give youth a chance'. Moreover, Rahul could have said he was a 'Mr. Clean' who was sick and tired of the corruption in Manmohan's Coalition Cabinet. It may not have been true but it was what people wanted to hear.
Congress did get a new lease of life when Rahul consented to become President of the Party at the end of 2017. For his part, Rahul felt that his own views had been justified by the Party's debacle in 2014. Under his command, the party would follow the correct strategy and thus annihilate Modi and the BJP.
What was that strategy? For Rahul, a votary of Vipassana, you triumph by ceasing to react to your circumstances. Don't accept what appears obvious or irrefragable. Your mind can create the reality you want. In an interview with India Today before the 2019 election he said, in response to a question about his favorite fruit- 'I do Vipassana.
Which means seeing things as they really are. It doesn't mean you can disregard reality and make up any shit you like.
The mind constructs the flavour of the fruit.
No it doesn't. The fruit we buy and eat has a taste which has been selected for intensively. This has to do with our taste receptors, which, too, are co-evolved. Buddhism could be considered a Bayesian approach to a Darwinian truth.
You can like or dislike any fruit you want.
Unless you are allergic.
You can choose to like mango, you can choose to hate it.
Up to a point. But what would be the point?
You can choose to like poor people, you can choose to hate them. You construct everything in your mind. The mind decides everything. I might start off hating someone, but after a bit of interaction, I’ll see things through their eyes, and be like: Actually, I like him; he’s great’.
Rahul thinks that 'interaction' with poor people will cause him to like them. This will cause them to like him and think he is great. It turns out Rahul's Vipassana Jedi mind-trick is the the sort of thing you might tell an eight year old Richie Rich who, for some reason, has to attend a public school alongside smelly proles. If he can suppress his natural reflex of disgust, he is halfway to being able to manipulate them using his superior mental powers.
But to answer your question: I like mangoes, I like bananas, I never used to like carrots, but now I do. I never used to like asparagus, but I do now.'
In the same interview, he revealed his strategy to defeat Modi. Briefly, the idea is that if people say 'X will win because X has Y quality', you can control your mind and refuse to react in the normal way- which would be to find some other Achilles heel to target- to this information. Instead, you can change the facts of the case by 'interaction'. Others will start seeing through your eyes. They will understand that Modi is not a Backward Caste person from a family which has not enriched itself in a corrupt matter. Actually Modi is a plutocrat. He is a British Lord in disguise who hates Hinduism.
Thus Rahul said in 2019 that Modi would be defeated because people would believe he was corrupt. ' don’t start with the idea that you can’t do it. You can. All it takes is persistence. It applies in everyday life too. Everyone told me Mr Narendra Modi can’t be defeated. I said, Yeah, you really think so?’ I asked them, Tell me what Mr Narendra Modi’s strength is.’ They said, His strength is his [incorruptible] image.’ I said, Okay, I’m going to rip that strength to pieces. I’m going to take it and shred it.’ And I’ve done it. Persistence, my friend! Keep going and keep going and keep going. And I will keep going until the truth on Rafale is out!'
Sadly, the Supreme Court gave a clean chit to the Government on Rafale. But, even prior to this, there seems to have been no impact on voters. On the other hand, Rahul's claim that Modi isn't OBC is bound to be believed. It is obvious that Modi is a Chinese lady who is also the King of Sweden.
There is another reason why Rahul will go down in the history books as the man pre-destined by History to pull down the curtain on Bharat's long humiliation as a wounded civilization which needed to 'negotiate' and compromise with external or internal enemies. This is because Rahul is trying to use his 'Vipassana' based super-powers to change the past. He says Congress was never a cadre based party even though the RSS was an imitation of the Congress Seva Dal. The BJP evolved out of the RSS backed Jan Sangh thanks to a revolt by 'Old Congress' leaders, together with 'backward caste' Socialists against the Dynasticism and Authoritarianism of Indira's Congress. Since it wasn't caste based, the BJP could evolve into a National Party though that process is, even now, far from complete. Still, since India's Man of Destiny has created an 'INDIA' alliance which has already self-destructed, Modi has the chance, in his term of office, to ensure that the BJP does gain traction in every State of the Union. However, it will take many years before the BJP's cadres will achieve as broad a geographic reach as did Congress even before Independence. God alone knows why Rahul wants Congress to forget that it was once dominant because it was cadre based. The simplest answer is best. If Congress isn't destined to decline, Rahul's destiny would be to get shot or blown up like Daddy or Granny.
More mischievously, Rahul is using his Vipassana based Jedi mind-tricks to broadcast the idea that the different states- Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Assam etc- got together and 'negotiated' the creation of the Indian Union. The thing was 'bottom up', rather than 'top down'. Thus India is like the USA which was constituted by 13 colonies and which thus retains 'Dual Sovereignty', though the Federal Government has the upper hand. Indeed, Rahul says India is like the E.U. which permits the exit of any of its sovereign members. According to him the Constitution in describing 'India that is Bharat shall be a 'Union of States', recognizes the sovereignty of each constitutive unit.
This is not the view of the Bench. It was not the view of Rahul's ancestors. The Bench has clarified that no State- including J&K- has a shred of sovereignty. Any State or Union or other Territory can be abolished, divided, renamed or amalgamated even without any consultation with the people of that State. In other words, India that is Bharat can decide how many, if any States, there should be. When the Constitution was promulgated, there was a Madras State out of which 'Tamil Nadu' was carved out. Subsequently Andhra Pradesh was split up. Rahul could see for himself that the latter event was 'top down' and did not involve negotiation with the people concerned. Why then is Rahul making this absurd claim? The most plausible answer is that he can't get elected in the North. In the South, he thinks there could be a type of secessionist sentiment which he himself can fan up and profit by at the ballot box. After all, C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar had wanted Travancore to go it alone. Later, there was a brief period when the DMK advocated a separate Greater Dravidian Nation in the South. The problem here is that Rahul does not speak a South Indian language. He can't be the head of a South Indian secessionist movement. All he can be is a 'useful idiot' for the sort of people who supported the Tamil Tigers and enabled that organization to kill Rahul's daddy when he visited Tamil Nadu. Sadly, if there is a war with China- as there was in '62- separatist sentiment will become anathema in the South. Tamil Nadu will rally behind Modi. Suddenly Annamalai might look like a future CM. Hopefully, the Chinese won't be foolish enough to start any trouble on the border and Rahul can continue to fulfil his destiny as the man who, if he couldn't destroy India, could still make Congress anti-National and yet more un-Indian.
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