A spectre is haunting the Narendra Modi establishment. The ministerial colleagues, government departments and even the Army are being mobilised to exorcise the spectre and save the nation from the perceived disaster posed by what the PM described in Lok Sabha as baal buddhi.
Consider what happened during Rahul Gandhi’s 100-minute maiden speech as the Leader of the Opposition on the Presidential address. All senior ministers were summoned to interrupt him. Home minister Amit Shah made four and PM three interruptions.
Among the Cabinet ministers present were – apart from Modi and Shah – Rajnath Singh, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Bhupendra Yadav, Gajendra Singh and Kiran Rijiju. Each went on contesting Rahul’s references which fall under their ministry.
Senior ministers, including Amit Shah, Bhupendra Yadav and Kiren Rijiju, were pressed into service to meet Speaker Om Birla to insist on expunging portions of Rahul’s address. After the meeting, Birla obliged and expunged 14 parts at one stroke from the address. These include his references to Hinduism and BJP but not Modi’s rebuttals the next day.
Reminiscent of the old ‘Pappu’ kind of jibes, PM, in his reply to the debate the next day, compared Rahul to a child who fell from a cycle. He showered epithets like ‘balak buddhi’ (child-level intelligence) and ‘tum se nahi ho payaga’ (you cannot make it) on Rahul. The first comment he repeated three times. Tum se nahi ho payaga is a dialogue from an old Hindi film. He was taunting Rahul for his failure to help Congress cross the 100-mark during the past 10 years.
Also read: The Radical Rahul Gandhi Nobody Expected
Hours later, referring to the rumours of Modi holding a press conference at Varanasi, Congress hit back: tum se nahi ho payaga. The reference was Modi’s reluctance to hold a regular press conference during his entire tenure. Before him, all PMs used to hold annual press meet where the media was free to ask questions.
Consider how the loyal followers obeyed the new war cry.
- Taking a cue from the big boss, immediately after Rahul’s speech, Kiren Rijiju said he would request the Speaker to issue a privilege notice to Rahul Gandhi.
- Union minister Sarbananda Sonowal concluded that the opposition has lost its self-confidence and Rahul’s speech reflected their nervousness.
- Even Kangana Ranaut – who is known for her recent political faux pax like Subhas Chandra Bose was India’s first PM – also recorded her loyalty: “Rahul’s is a good standup comedian act”.
- Parliament TV showed its allegiance to the power that be by focusing just for 14 minutes of Rahul’s 37-minute address. This is not the practice when ruling party MPs speak
- The godi media even found fault with Rahul’s remarks about Abhay Mudra and (falsely) claimed it was the wrong interpretation.
The all-out Modi-style mobilisation against Rahul Gandhi was not confined to parliament. Cabinet ministers were later deputed to hold a media briefing on behalf of the BJP assailing Rahul.
Ministries and departments are being asked to counter his remarks wherever made. Even the apolitical Army was forced to join by officially contradicting Rahul’s remarks on Agnivir.
In an X (formerly Twitter) post, the Army, under political pressure, contested Rahul’s claim and said that Agnivir Ajay Kumar, who died in a mine blast, was given Rs.98.39 lakh compensation. However, The Wire after a fact check found that the compensation claimed by the Army was actually insurance money which was shown as the Army’s ‘compensation.’ A martyred Agnivir Anshuman Singh’s mother said it all. She pleaded with folded hands: “Please scrap this whole scheme”.
Railways, another government department, was coerced to contradict Rahul Gandhi’s interaction with a group of loco pilots. Photographs of the meeting with pilots were also carried by the media. But Northern Railways officially denied it and said they were ‘outsiders’.
In a counter, the unions said they were serving drivers, not outsiders. A week later, the railway minister himself came out with more contradictions.
Taking a cue from the boss, fringe Hindutva groups have joined the anti-Rahul drive. A Karnataka BJP MLA has called for “locking up Rahul in parliament and trashing” him. At least half a dozen court cases have been filed against Gandhi after his parliament speech. A Muzaffarpur court promptly summoned Rahul on July 15. Another case was filed in a Sheohar court.
All this despite the fact that what is spoken in parliament is non-judiciable. Members’ immunity from court prosecution was provided under Article 105 of the constitution. Bansuri Swaraj has filed a notice in Lok Sabha for ‘inaccuracies’ in Rahul’s address.
What has further upset the Modi establishment has been Rahul Gandhi’s growing popularity among different sections of people as a serious politician. For over a year, he has been relentlessly interacting with different sections of people. These are not election or publicity-oriented. Nor for TV publicity. It lasts hours as in the case of the interaction with truck drivers, auto mechanics of Karol Bagh, and gig workers of Telangana. These began much before the elections.
He has been among furniture carpenters for as long as half a day, missing lunch. Apparently, this sense of involvement and empathy has put the Modi team in a quandary. If they lampoon his interaction with Azad Market’s vegetable vendors or Anand Vihar’s railway porters as ‘Pappu’s balak buddhi’, it would evoke the displeasure of large sections. Yet the establishment’s stoic ‘maun’.
Look at Rahul’s way of connecting with different sections of polity over the past few months.
- Rahul Gandhi travelled in a truck overnight from Delhi to Chandigarh to understand the truck drivers living conditions and the problems they daily face. Later during the truckers’s strike against the new law Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), he actively supported their demand.
- In September last, he was with the carpenters of Kirti Nagar’s famous furniture market and was with them for half a day trying to understand their problems.
- In July last, at Marina village in Haryana, he was in knee-deep waters to transplant paddy seedlings, inviting ridicule from Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
- He was with railway porters, himself carrying on head huge luggage at Delhi’s Anand Vihar railway station in September, and in August, with vegetable and fruit vendors of Azad Market. In July last, he was with motor mechanics of Karol Bagh and gig workers of Telangana.
- In September, during his Jaipur visit, Rahul was found pillion riding on a university girl’s Scooty. In October, he had another pillion ride with a Congress worker to reach a party leader’s house and in Bangalore with a delivery boy.
Apart from ground visits, he is on a constant move from Manipur (his third since the violence began), Assam, Amethi and now to join the annual Pandharpur pilgrimage. This has invited BJP’s wrath. Its state leaders rued that all this was with an eye on the Maharashtra assembly elections.
Ironically all of the ruling party’s barbs, lampooning and abuses have boomeranged on it.
“Congress-Mukt Bharat is not only a slogan, but our determination”, Modi roared in January 2014. Ironically, the Congress has bounced back and Modi’s much-maligned Shahansha was forced to be recognised as the Leader of the Opposition.
Also read: In Maiden Speech as LoP, Rahul Gandhi Tears into Modi Govt on Hate Politics, Price Rise and NEET
The PM had showered derisive epithets like namdar and failed dynast, prince and Shahansha at Rahul. Look at his council of ministers. Over one-fourth of them are dynasts — right from J.P. Nadda, Piyush Goyal and Jyotiraditya Scindia to Kiren Rijiju, Jitin Prasada and H.D. Kumaraswamy. Barring the last name, all others belonged to the BJP.
Consider the lineage of the PM what Rahul Gandhi calls ‘sarkari Parivar.’
- D. Kumaraswamy: Son of former PM H.D. Deve Gowda
- Jyotiraditya Scindia: Son of former union minister Madhavrao Scindia
- J.P.Nadda: Son-in-law of former MP minister Jayashree Banerjee
- Kiren Rijiju: Son of Arunachal leader Richin Kharu
- Jayant Chaudhary: Son of Ajit Singh and grandson of Charan Singh
- Chirag Paswan: Son of Ram Vilas Paswan.
- Piyush Goyal: Son of BJP leader Ved Prakash Goyal
- Dharmendra Pradhan: Son of Devendra Pradhan
- Jitin Prasada: Son of former Congress leader Jitendra Prasada
- Rammohan Naidu: Son of former Telugu Desam Party leader Yerren Naidu
- Kamlesh Paswan: Son of the late BJP MLA Om Prakash Paswan
- Inderjit Singh: Son of former CM Birender Singh.
- Annapurna Devi: Wife of former BJP MLA Ramesh Prasad
- Anupriya: Daughter of Apna Dal founder Sonelal Patel
- Ram Nath Thakur: Son of Bihar veteran Karpoori Thakur
- Kirtivardhan Singh: Son of former minister Maharaj Anand
- Raksha Khandse: Niece of NCP leader Eknath Khandse
- Virendra Kumar Kathik: Brother-in-law of MP BJP leader Gouri Shankar Shejwar
- Ravneet Singh Bittu: Grandson of former Punjab CM Beant Singh
- Santanu Thakur: Son of former minister Manjul Thakur.
Support for Rahul’s posture on Hindu-Hindutva came from Swami Avimuktananda Saraswati of Jyotish Peeth. He said Rahul had not insulted the Hindu religion. Incidentally, all Shankaracharyas had declined invitations to attend the Ram Mandir inauguration due to sharp differences in the way it was organised.
P. Raman is a veteran journalist.
