Rahul Gandhi once said that he could have become PM when he turned 25. He was right. True, like his father, he'd have faced back-stabbers within his own Cabinet and would have been brought down, but- like his father- he'd have bided his time and waited for his successors' coalitions to break down before returning to power. All Rahul needed to do was avoid getting assassinated.
When Rahul returned to India in 2002, Congress's fortunes revived. Had Rahul spearheaded its campaign, Congress would have gained a majority. Atal was clearly senile. Mamta kept walking in and out of his Cabinet. Fernandes's reputation had been hit by a corruption scandal. Nobody could be sure that Modi, Advani's protege, might not implode in Gujarat. Maybe Vaghela could revive the KHAM caste equation. Maybe the Patels would rebel under Keshubhai. More to the point, maybe the farmers would demand free electricity or Narmada water would dry up for some exogenous reason.
Rahul's refusal to takeover the running of the Commonwealth Games (his father had run the Asian Games) and then his refusal to shoulder aside the senile Manmohan & lead his party into the 2014 election as the sitting PM, enabled Modi to get a majority. The hope was that this was a strategic move. Maybe Rahul was about to get married so as to sire an heir for Dynasty. Meanwhile, let Modi do the required land & labour reform. There is bound to be a reaction. Congress, under Rahul, wins big in 2019. The problem was that Modi wasn't a senile sack of shit- like Atal. Demonetization took the wind out of the sails of the anti-corruption movement. The air-strike against Pak terror camps was hugely popular. But Rahul did a great deal to make himself and his party unelectable. 'Chowkidar chor hai' (the watchman is the thief) is elitist. Rich people blame the servant when something goes missing. Modi came from the 'chowkidar' class. Rahul had ancestral wealth. Moreover, his attempt to appease the Hindus stressed his elite Brahmin status. Modi's Hinduism is ecumenical & independent of caste. Most damaging of all was Rahul's failure to reach seat-sharing agreements with other parties. Once Kharge came in, Congress greatly improved its tally purely on this basis. But the opposition still doesn't have a credible Prime Ministerial face.
The one thing Rahul & Priyanka got right was Kerala- which Congress has been able to take. In Karnataka, too, there seems to have been a peaceful transition of power. What is helpful to Congress in the South is that Rahul can't speak any of the local languages.
Ram Guha- the depths of whose stupidity have still not been plumbed- writes in Scroll
Soon after the general elections of 2024, I met a young Congress legislator.
If he was from Karnataka, he would expect Guha to praise Kharge's generalship.
He asked me for five pieces of advice for his leader, Rahul Gandhi. I said I had only one; that Priyanka Gandhi should not run for the Lok Sabha from Wayanad.
That was a great move. It showed the Dynasty was committed to Kerala and raised the possibility that Priyanka could be the Prime Ministerial face while Rahul focussed on touring the country to establish 'mass contact'.
I added that I was certain the advice would be disregarded.
Would Kharge listen to a Tambram shithead? Fuck, no!
There is little doubt that Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra helped in enhancing his credibility, in portraying him as being a man of the people. Yet the Yatra’s gains were frittered away by the reassertion, after the elections, of the Congress as a family firm.
It can be nothing else. Look at Karnataka. Why did Siddaramiah yield to Shivakumar? It was because the Dynasty has reasserted residuary control rights. That's a good thing provided Rahul doesn't do stupid shit.
Priyanka Gandhi won the Wayanad seat
thus helping Congress take Kerala from the Commies
(as safe for her as Gandhinagar is for Amit Shah), and spoke grandiosely about how she and her brother were uniting the country, her representing the South and he the North.
Priyanka is smart. She always knows the right thing to say.
Then, for a parliamentary debate on the Constitution’s 75th anniversary, the Congress chose Priyanka as the lead speaker,
she did a great job.
even though it was her own grandmother who sabotaged the Constitution by imposing the Emergency.
She lifted it quickly enough.
Meanwhile, the Congress winning 99 seats in the general elections encouraged the coterie of sycophants around Rahul Gandhi to proclaim that he was now a prime minister-in-waiting.
This is the normal presumption re. the Leader of the Opposition. The exception was Sonia who was Italian.
These claims were amplified by intellectuals and journalists in Delhi, whose sterling anti-Hindutva credentials were clouded by their lack of judgment, and perhaps by the seductions of being rajgurus.
To be anti Hindutva in a Hindu country is to show lack of judgment. Rajgurus are guys like Prashant Kishore who can help a Party win the elections.
Premature elation
Two years later, we can see that this sense of elation was premature.
There wasn't much elation. What if Nitish stabbed Modi in the back in his usual manner? There would be another General Election. BJP would get an absolute majority. This is still the state of play- albeit with the added twist that seat redistribution in favour of the Hindi belt is likely to be accomplished by 2029.
The odd state unit of the Congress (such as Kerala) remains well-organised, and capable of winning the odd assembly election.
Kerala has pendulum politics. All parties there are well organized because Malayalee people are good at organization.
In most other parts of India, the party has steadily lost ground.
Because it is anti-Hindu and led by a cretin.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is now the natural party of governance in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, and several other states where the Congress was once dominant. Rahul Gandhi has been incapable of arresting this slide.
Mamta couldn't stop BJP taking Bengal. As with Assam, there is genuine fear of Muslim demographic growth & the politics of appeasement.
According to a recent report in The Print, since Rahul assumed a formal leadership role in the Congress around 2008, the number of Congress MLAs nationwide has dropped by almost half, from 1,204 to 676.
BJP has 1811 now. It had 889 in 2008.
I have met and corresponded with Rahul Gandhi,
but not Modi or anybody else with half a brain.
and know him to be a decent human being. Even without this slight acquaintance, I would have much sympathy for him because of the personal tragedies he has suffered,
the same ones his mum & sister suffered
and because at the age of 55 he remains an instrument of his mother’s will.
No more than she is of his.
One can have little doubt that he entered politics at Sonia Gandhi’s command,
She could have become PM herself or promoted her daughter. Rahul returned to India at the age of 32 because he hadn't made anything of himself.
and that he leads the Congress at her behest too.
If Guha says so, we know it can't possibly be true.
However, when the future of the Republic is at stake, one is forced to state one’s case directly and even brutally. Rahul Gandhi may be a good fellow; nonetheless, those who wish for a successful pushback against the hate-filled regime of the BJP should perhaps stop looking to him as their principal source of hope.
Guha is filled with hate for the BJP. Sadly his brains are filled with shit.
As a prospective prime ministerial challenger to Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi lacks discipline, gravitas and a curriculum vitae.
Didn't stop his daddy- an airline pilot- becoming PM. Rahul could put Priyanka forward as the PM face because she is civilized and has a brain. Thus other parties- if given good portfolios- will be willing to let Congress take the lead. The problem with Rahul is that he is stupid & talks bollocks. Nobody wants to serve under him.
Even when he takes up an important issue, such as the partisan conduct of the Election Commission of India, he rarely does so in a sustained manner.
There is no 'partisan conduct'. It is the job of the EC to strike off bogus voters from the electoral roll. The fact that this harms gangster parties- like the TMC- doesn't mean it isn't the right thing to do.
We see him giving the odd press conference on “vote chori”, followed by a trip to Europe or Latin America.
He truly is shit. Still, if you get candidate selection right & put a Prashant Kishore type expert in charge, you can still win big. There are plenty of other playboy dynastic politicians. If they delegate to smart people, their party can stay in power.
Indeed, in his 22 years in politics,
in Parliament. He was born into politics.
it was only during the few months of the Bharat Jodo Yatra that Rahul Gandhi showed himself capable of the focused hard work that the leaders of the BJP put in all the time.
That's unfair. He put in a fair number of hours in 2017 before taking over as President in December. Rahul was given credit for Congress gains in Rajasthan, Chattisgarh & Madhya Pradesh.
Nowadays, his political interventions are mostly on X, attracting an array of immediate likes, yet destined to be forgotten within 24 hours.
That is irrelevant. Either Congress rebuilds support amongst Hindu, Hindi, speakers or it gets relegated to the Dravidian fringe. Currently, it is Vijay's victory in Tamil Nadu which is concentrating minds. He kept his powder dry, entered late, and relied on his fan clubs. Equally, Mamta's fall shows the limits of kleptocratic populism. Mamta's histrionics were insufficient for her to even retain her own seat. Her nephew's 'Diamond Harbour model' is in tatters.
To be fair, one could say that the BJP has expanded by taking over disgruntled Congressmen in Assam, Bengal, etc. But, the question is, what caused the disgruntlement? Alliance with Communists in the case of Mamta & the TMC. But Muslim appeasement was also a factor. Don't forget Mamta quit the Lok Sabha on the issue of 'infiltration'.
Gestural gimmickry
Rahul’s lack of gravitas is also manifest in his gestural gimmickry, his naïve belief that jumping into a pond with fisherfolk or entering a kitchen with a chef will win his party votes.
Nothing wrong with gimmicks. Rahul is ensuring that party funds are spent on building him up as the big Boss who decides the 'vichardhara' (ideology) of Congress. Thus, he says, his cousin can't join Congress because he has the wrong vichardhara. The problem is that it is an anti-Hindu ideology. Only Stalin was genuinely enthused by it, but Stalin is now in the dustbin of history. Will his MPs as well as those loyal to Mamta turn on Rahul in Parliament? Perhaps. But that won't change anything on the ground.
And his lack of a curriculum vitae is manifest in his never having held a real job.
He doesn't have Ministerial experience. But both his granny and his daddy hadn't held any significant portfolio before becoming PM. This is why both faced rebellions within their own Cabinet.
No one really knows what employment Rahul Gandhi had before he became an MP in 2004.
He was employed by Michael Porter's Monitor Group whose clients included India based FCMGs (fast moving consumer goods) & IT companies.
In the ten years that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance was in power, he refused to take a ministerial position.
He refused to take charge of the Commonwealth Games the way his Dad took charge of the Asian games. Still, the main job of a Dynast is to get married & have babies. That was his most serious shortcoming.
Why then should Indian voters trust him to be an effective prime minister of this large and diverse country, and in an ever more threatening geopolitical environment?
If Sonia could preside as his Regent, why couldn't he step up to the plate even if it was only to replace Manmohan with Montek or some other technocrat? The truth is he neither wanted the job himself (probably because of the risk of assassination) nor will he let anyone else in his party take it. He tore up Manmohan's ordinance but wouldn't shoulder the old man and take the job himself. This creates a problem for the Opposition. Even if Rahul lets one of them become PM, he will cut the fellow off at the knees. Also, his obdurate stupidity & ignorance would make him impossible to work with as a 'first among equals'.
Finally, Rahul Gandhi has a marked inability to learn from past mistakes.
Like Guha.
The “chowkidar chor hai” campaign spectacularly backfired in 2019, yet he continues to personally attack the prime minister (calling him cowardly, compromised and so on),
Rahul is right to attack Modi for being Westernized, Elitist & out of touch with Indian reality. The fellow can't even speak Gujarati! I suppose, they don't teach Indian languages at Eton. Rahul, by contrast, started off as a chaiwallah and then worked his way upward.
instead of focusing on governance failures
in Karnataka?
or indeed on renewing his own party at the grassroots.
Mummy is the grassroot.
Many in the Congress acknowledge these criticisms, but, out of a lifetime of devotion to the Gandhis, think that his sister should be presented as the prime minister-in-waiting instead. Having belatedly realised that Rahul is not the new Nehru, they now hope that Priyanka will be the new Indira.
Screw that. She's a nice, polite, lady with common sense. She could preside over a Coalition Cabinet well enough. Also, it is her son who is the heir. She doesn't have to be the second Indira. Just desi Sonia is good enough.
Admittedly, Priyanka is a far better orator than her brother in Hindi, a language understood by a plurality of Indians.
Also English.
However, she too carries the burden of being an entitled dynast.
No. She's an Empty-Nester who has taken up politics rather than competitive Mahjong. But can Raihan be the next Rahul? He is engaged to a Muslim. If he marries her without converting, he loses the Muslim vote. If he converts, he loses period.
And she may be even less successful in getting voters out. On the one occasion Priyanka led an election campaign, for the 2022 assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress’s vote share was 2.27%.
Congress lost in all 5 states. Can Congress ally with Mayawati? Currently, she is turning away their overtures. Since we expect the Hindi belt to get more seats after the next General Election, UP in 2027 is going to be watched very closely.
Dynastic entitlement
Incidentally, one (apparently unnoticed) lesson from the recent assembly elections is that all represented a negative comment on dynastic entitlement. The BJP was helped in Assam by
promising to deport Bangladeshis
Tarun Gogoi’s son leading the Congress campaign, and in West Bengal by
promising to deport Bangladeshis
Mamata Banerjee’s promotion of her nephew, Abhishek. In Tamil Nadu, Vijay was aided by Stalin’s elevation of his son, Udhayanidhi,
a film-star- but not as big a film-star as Vijay whose Dad (who had previously launched Vijaykantha) had helped turn Vijay's fan clubs into socio-political organizations. Vijay's genius was to come out from under his Dad's shadow & go it alone. Will he do a reverse takeover of the Anna DMK? But if he is shit at governance he will get the order of the boot.
in Kerala the Congress by Vijayan’s promotion of his son-in-law.
who is Muslim.
Of course, there were many other factors at work, but this was certainly one of them.
Not really. Vijayan avoided defeat last time around because of Teacher Shailaja's handling of COVID. Otherwise anti-incumbency would have prevailed.
These criticisms of the Congress’s First Family are far from being an endorsement of the current regime.
An endorsement from Guha is the kiss of death.
In numerous articles written since the Modi government came to power in 2014, I have
told hysterical lies
documented how it has eviscerated public institutions, cowed the press and the judiciary, undermined democratic processes, brutalised religious minorities,
sodomized ghosts
pursued an error-strewn foreign policy, damaged Indian science, promoted crony capitalism, and ravaged our forests, soils, water, and air.
& forced Guha to eat his own shit
There is no question that the principal architects of this undoing of the Republic since May 2014 are Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and their party, the BJP. Yet it is also now starkly evident that in their pursuit and consolidation of power, Modi and Shah have had, as their (witting or unwitting) accomplices, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and the sycophants who surround them.
Not to mention Guha who now eats nothing but his own shit.
I must not end on a despairing note. At the moment, the BJP under Modi looks impregnable. But so did Viktor Orbán and Fidesz in Hungary, and yet they were spectacularly unseated by the hitherto unknown Péter Magyar
who worked in Orban's office. Magyar could be compared to Adhikari. Why not suggest that Smriti Irani will take down Modi?
and his new Tisza Party. For two years prior to the election, Magyar travelled the country tirelessly, going to small towns and even villages to make his case
that his wife & other party big-wigs had covered up a sexual abuse scandal in a Children's home.
against the authoritarian who had run and ruined Hungary. Magyar worked assiduously to build an Opposition alliance of all parties, Left, liberal, and Centre-Right. That he was a fresh face, untainted by corruption or dynastic privilege, and worked so hard were all inestimable assets.
Hungary has a population of ten million. India has a population of 1.4 billion. Guha has shit for brains.
As a Hungarian editor quoted in the Financial Times said about Magyar: “He is incredibly driven. Others have the tools, but he went in and did all the legwork.”
In a country with less than one-third the population of Delhi.
This, alas, is not what anyone can say about Rahul or Priyanka Gandhi.
Unless they win. Rajiv was on his way back to victory when he was killed. But he came across as a Hindu- like his mother. Indeed, she had fought a court case to establish that her sons were of the Hindu faith. Rahul is anti-Hindu- like Guha. Also, like Guha, he has shit for brains. Still, it is enough to be less shitty than your rival to win elections. The problem facing the Dynasty is that Assassination tempers Autocracy. Rahul, quite naturally, wants to put off the evil day when he comes into his birth-right.
