By: M.R.Lalu
The winter session of the parliament has been absolutely stormy – the constitution debate, to be precise. It exacerbated the frustration of those who performed poorly in the recently concluded state elections. The winners have all reasons to be jubilant while losers have to sit back and contemplate. Leaders of the Congress party seemed to have lost control over their behaviour and its representative from the privileged clan of leaders from the party dynasty lost his intellectual lust to an unpardonable mimicry. Rahul Gandhi was visibly feeble while articulating his responsibility of being the Leader of Opposition. It could have been an amicable debate on the efficacy of the country’s constitution on its 75th anniversary of adoption. But the leaders turned the proceedings in both the houses into an intolerable display of arrogance. Conceivably, both sides mostly focused on reasons to down size the other side.
As usual, Rahul Gandhi was once again candid, while giving an interesting stuff for laughter, a repetition of his defective understanding of the Indian epics. His reference on Eklavya with an undertone on the marginalized and youths in India landed him in a messed up terrain inviting sharp criticism from some Hindu acharyas. The version he narrated was of distorted taste and his story in the parliament was consumed to be an attempt to demean the essential values that Hinduism preserved, they critiqued. Whatever, one thing is clear, that Rahul Gandhi is intensely tutored by his close camaraderie but he, for some personal reasons, lacks true abilities to grasp the knowledge of the Indian spiritual tradition. The controversy erupted was not only about his falsified narration, but his convenient twisting of the crux. That guru Dronacharya chopped the thumb of Eklavya – an adivasi boy to connote in modern terms, a skilled archer, for eliminating his expertise permanently, was a well framed parallel to demean the government under Prime Minister Modi. It was Eklavya who shopped his thumb as his Gurudakshina to Dronacharya, a unique offering at least in his case, in tune with India’s Guru-Shishya tradition. Gurudakshina was the tradition but thumb was quite unusual and an extreme offering. Rahul Gandhi’s statement won him labels such as ‘Hindu Virodhi’ and’ Rashtra Virodhi’.
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Addressing the Lok Sabha on the occasion, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was armed with facts that could substantiate the ‘evils’ of the Congress mostly exposing them chronologically starting from the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Except registering their murmur of discontent, occasional tootles and the disruption of the parliamentary proceedings, the Congress and its clan of allies had been thoroughly disarmed by Modi as he spoke consistently with a challenging erudition. This session indeed experienced a renewed flavor of aggression at the Congress side as Priyanka Vadra’s entry into the Lok Sabha gave it more power and stuff to recriminate the Modi regime. But the opposition’s pandemonium once again exposed its predicaments sounding louder and the convulsion due to its defeat in the state of Maharashtra was eventually protruding. Priyanka’s conscious depiction of a game-changing political upswing was visible when she entered the parliament with a Palestine print tote bag. Probably, this was an audacious attempt to redefine politics in her style and an ideal taunt on the ruling dispensation. Bag politics was unexpected. And the impact of such appeasing responses needs to wait until the moment of testimony arrives-the elections. But there was a planned balancing act by the same person who, certainly with some reluctance, reached the premises of the parliament again with another bag and a compassionate catchphrase printed on it. This time it was for the Hindus in Bangladesh. Remember, the Congress and its supreme leader Rahul Gandhi remained silent on the fate of the Hindus and other minorities throughout the episode of atrocities in India’s neighborhood. Their devastatingly demoralizing torture by radicals was left unnoticed by the party that for obvious electoral reasons kept its principle, its stand of minority appeasement. Priyanka Vadra seems to have deciphered the direction of the wind that remains nationalistic ever since the Modi regime began its power-play in 2014. Grappling with the inefficient and fractured political sensibility of her brother, the lady, new in the parliamentary scenario, seems to have been overburdened to undo his political gimmicks.
Despite having a reinvigorated presence in the house, the Congress once again failed to enhance its importance in the parliament ensuring its meaningful presence. It deliberately pulled on the Adani blame-game. On the larger framework of democratic participation what it actually failed to shed were its pursuing narrow political interests. All this anger, desperation and aggression began with the party’s realization of its shrinking vote share in Haryana and Maharashtra. Before those elections, the party apparatus predicted that the results would be the reason for a stunning jubilation but they turned out to be a terrific jolt. Amid multiple political missteps and his personal arrogance, the foremost leader of the party, Rahul Gandhi once again brought a bitter sense of suspicion on his leadership and there have been murmurs of disgruntlement in the INDI alliance with some members vociferously drumming for a leadership change. There have also been rattling remarks generously demanding a new savior and Mamata Banerjee being projected as a possible contender to check the political onslaught of the Modi regime.
Breaking all possibilities of consensus, the country’s parliament witnessed a mystified ruling dispensation and opposition wrestle out their enmity in an upsetting manner leaving two MPs from the BJP injured. All in the name of their commitment to Ambedkar, their tussle, the wild altercation, reanimated their deep-seated discomfort and distrust. The fresh squabbles in the parliament engraved Rahul Gandhi’s disruptor image deeper. His party and the INDI alliance have sensible reasons to make him believe that his behavior would undoubtedly bless them with more vulnerabilities and disgraceful moments. Understandably, the discourse on the country’s constitution and its glory was filled with vengeance and unaffordable apathy and the whole process did reprehensibly hurt the electorate. (The author is a freelance journalist who can be reached at mrlalu@30gmail.com)
