Recently pop historian cum Nehru bhakt Ramachandra Guha expressed an interesting desire. He called for a leadership change in the Congress, with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar leading the grand old party.
According to him, if this ‘fantasy’ of his becomes true, it would mean a match made in heaven as the Congress is a ‘party without a leader’ while Nitish is a ‘leader without a party’.
Even though such a fantasy might not come true anytime soon, I decided to imagine a possible Congress meeting with Nitish as a president. So here it goes:
Congress party is holding a regular meeting of the party’s top leadership at their 24 Akbar Road headquarters in Delhi, with all the leaders like Kapil Sibal, Digvijaya Singh, Shashi Tharoor, Salman Khurshid among others.
New Party President Nitish Kumar welcomes Yuva Margdarshak Mandal chief Rahul Gandhi, who had decided to spend a few days in India, and starts the proceedings:
Nitish Kumar: So good morning everybody, thank your for letting me take up the Presidency of your party on a trial basis, which can then be made permanent if the party finds my work satisfactory. So let us begin. I want to come to the most important issue – we do not have any alternative narrative to offer.
Rahul Gandhi: That’s not true. We always have alternatives ready.
Nitish: How?
Rahul: See, if the narrative that ‘Rahul Gandhi did not meet Chinese envoy’ doesn’t work, we offer an alternative narrative that ‘Rahul Gandhi indeed met Chinese envoy’.
Nitish: I am talking about narratives we offer to the people, not to the media. I mean we keep on opposing Modi and point problems, but we don’t say this is the solution.
Rahul: We have the solutions too – women empowerment, RTI…
Nitish: Okay let’s leave it for now. Let’s review our performance in the last assembly elections. So as I understand we could have formed a government in Goa and Manipur, with us being the largest party. Why didn’t it work out, Digvijay ji?
Digvijay Singh: Well, we were on our way to meet some independent MLAs, which would have meant more than enough support, but were lynched by a mob on route to our venue.
Nitish: Hain! Who died?
Digvjaya: No no nothing of that sort. Our car brushed with another vehicle and the drivers started abusing and slapping each other. We decided to claim that a lynching is taking place. We tweeted about it, counted re-tweets, and were busy replying to tweets. Cunning BJP took advantage of this and formed the government in the meantime by talking to the MLAs.
Nitish: Seriously? You thought making up stories about lynching was more important?
Digvijaya: You just said we have to offer narratives to people. We are offering the narrative of Lynchistsan. Now you have a problem with that. You sound confused. We need to appoint Rahul ji as the President. I am loyal to the family only.
*Digvijaya starts shouting slogans and everyone joins demanding Rahul Gandhi take over the party. But they realise that Rahul Gandhi had left for Europe in the meantime. They decide to let Nitish continue*
Nitish: Let’s forget the past. We have to plan for the future assembly elections. Gujarat. What are the plans Sibal ji?
Kapil Sibal: We are at second place in Gujarat. So we are planning to retain the position. There will be zero loss. After that, we can claim that BJP has rigged the EVMs and murdered the Indian democracy.
*Shashi Tharoor inexplicably starts coughing after hearing the word murder*
Nitish: That is okay, but what if we win?
*Everybody in the room starts coughing*
Nitish: Okay fine. Let us make long term plans. Amit Shah is touring entire country, we have to find a counter strategy.
Salman Khurshid: Rahul Gandhi is touring entire world. So we are already doing better on that count. And wait a minute, are you not supposed to come up with ideas that Rahul Gandhi ji and Sonia Gandhi ji, who is the mother of every Indian, failed to come up with?
Nitish: She is not my mother!
*this again caused all Congress leaders and workers present to stand up and start shouting slogans against Nitish Kumar. Salman Khurshid threatened to break away from the party and form Congress-S, while one worker took out gun and threatened to kill himself if Sonia Gandhi did not become President again*
Just around then the Presidential candidate Meira Kumar walked in and said baith jayie, baith jayie, after which everyone stopped shouting and sat down. Nitish Kumar had left taking advantage of the din.