‘Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.” – Thoreau
As the curtains go down on one of the most volatile of the Parliamentary sessions of the second term of Narendra Modi, even the most ardent admirer of Rahul Gandhi is left feeling short-changed by his speech during the debate on the No Confidence motion against the Modi government brought by the Congress.
As expected the brute majority of BJP could easily sail through the Delhi Services Bill, placing the key powers of the Delhi Government in the hands of the Central Government as intended by the writers of the Indian Constitution, and the No-Confidence motion brought in by the recently cobbled up Coalition of Opposition parties on the matter of violence in Manipur. The two days long debate on the no-confidence motion had several well-articulated speeches from Gaurav Gogoi, Manish Tewari, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Kavita Patidar and Locket Chatterjee.
The low points of this Parliamentary session were Derek O Brien’s tantrums, Raghav Chadha letter, the hysterical Mahua Moitra, the screeching Rahul Gandhi and the ranting Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury. Adhir was marginalised by his own party as no speaking slot was sought for him as leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha. Possibly this was done due to the fear of him speaking about the violence of TMC, which has left many supporters of BJP and Congress refugees in the state of West Bengal.
Videos of women being stripped off and paraded after Panchayat Elections in West Bengal’s Malda have since emerged, which are no different than that infamous and horrendous video of Manipur which mysteriously appeared a day before the Monsoon session of the parliament and riding on which a vote for no-confidence in Modi government was moved by Gaurav Gogoi, Congress MP from Assam.
Incoherent as ever, Rahul Gandhi’s speech in the parliament, this time too, floated all over the place, with strange references to Hindu scriptures, and was full of fluff. Coming a day after the speech of Amit Shah in the Upper House on Manipur, where the Home Minister placed all the data in front of the Parliament on North East and in particular Manipur, the speech of Rahul Gandhi was nothing but a garbled string of words struggling to find a theme connecting them.
Rahul Gandhi started referring to his Bharat Jodo yatra, about how the yatra has helped make him humble. For a man of more than Fifty years in age, Rahul has been trying to reinvent himself as a man much interested in understanding how ‘Bharat’ operates. In some way, Rahul, having street food in Old Delhi, talking to UPSC aspirants in Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar, well-choreographed half-an-hour sowing season with farmers, has been trying to reinvent himself, somewhere on the lines of Gandhi after he returned from South Africa and England.
There are some glaring gaps between the real Gandhi’s travel across India and Rahul’s cleverly-crafted PR events. Gandhi travelled third-class across India, lived in slums, while Rahul travelled in a train of luxury Air-Conditioned containers, funded through unknown sources. Secondly, Gopal Krishna Gokhale planned Gandhi’s travel across India, so that the latter could well understand the problems of India before he started speaking on it. Gokhale even extracted a promise from Gandhi, that Gandhi will not utter a word on Indian issues for one year till his discovery of India is complete. Surrounded by sycophants, however, Rahul Gandhi is always so full of himself, that from the first leg of his Yatra, he started spewing venom on Hindutva, RSS and even Savarkar in Maharashtra.
When Rahul Gandhi stood up to speak on the No Confidence motion on the 9th of August, 2023, he started with a reference to Adani. It is really interesting that after the clean chit from Supreme Court on the stock manipulation charges, his speech writers did not tell him to refrain from beating a dead horse. In a chirpy mood, he said, I will make one or two attacks on Adani, but not more. Then he started his speech with his Bharat Jodo Yatra story.
He said, “I started on the journey alone, and corrected himself, that he was with others.” He explained that at the beginning he did not know why he was undertaking the Yatra, but then he felt he needed to meet people and understand Indian people. See, unlike Gandhi who had left India at the age of Nineteen, and when he returned to India he was Forty-five, Rahul Gandhi lived most of his life in India. For a politician to have lived all his life in India, to go on a Yatra across India, merely to know and understand India, only shows what kind of privileged and cut-off from the people’s life he must have lived.
In his 37-minute speech, he then spoke about how one of the victims met him in Manipur and then urged Narendra Modi to immediately send Army and claimed that the Army can bring things under control within a couple of days. The insurgency issues in complex democracies like India need subtler handling.
Congress, since the times of Nehru, has treated India like a fiefdom and maintained a King and subject kind of relationship with the citizens. This was reflected in Nehru’s attitude towards the North-East in the early days of independence and during the 1962 war with China, where he deflected the attention of the parliament from Chinese unauthorised encroachment in Indian territory for around 18 months and then was willing to meekly surrender even Assam.
In response to the No-Confidence Motion, Prime Minister Modi pointed out how Indira Gandhi ordered the aerial bombing in Mizoram on the 5th of March, 1966. The same people who were till yesterday calling bulldozers on illegal constructions in Nuh draconian and a bench in Punjab High Court even termed it ethnic cleansing, are struggling today to explain how this act of bombing Indian citizens by the Indian State was an action of nationalism.
Rasheed Kidwai in India Today writes that a strong sense of duty and national interest prompted Indira to act swiftly and rather decisively. On March 1st, 1966, Army Veteran Laldenga, then in Karachi, declared Mizoram an independent state. Shocking it was, but not much different from Kashmir during the insurgency. Mizo insurgency gained ground with the famine of 1959 called Mautam when Mizo National Famine Front was formed. This volunteer group later became Mizo National Front (MNF).
In 1960, on the issue of the Mizo Language and the mishandling of the famine situation, MNF split from Congress. In 1972, Mizoram was separated from Assam and became a Union Territory. Later, it became a full state. We need to take note that the insurgency continued in Mizoram for more than two decades and ended only after the Mizo accord in the 80s.
Rahul Gandhi has been raised in an environment which is insulated from all things Indian and above all, all things Hindu. This was not the case for Indira and Rajiv, who were known to have a good understanding of Hinduism. Rahul, during Bharat Jodo Yatra in Kerala, had the person as part of his yatra who on camera slaughtered a calf.
His utterances have been always anti-Hindu and one can see immense hatred in his voice and demeanour whenever he speaks about Hinduism. Still, the way things have changed in the last decade or so, now Hinduism has become essential to ensure that the majority electorate is not isolated. We must not forget that ever since Sonia Gandhi held control of Congress, and after her Rahul, they have been bringing in leaders to prominence with alleged anti-Hindu backgrounds. Remember, Channi was brought in from nowhere in Punjab and was alleged to have church links, similarly, the current Congress chief, a Neo-Buddhist, on camera said if BJP is not stopped, Sanatanis or Hindus will gain power.
Still, as Savarkar had predicted that once Hindus wake up, Congress leaders will wear their Janeu over their coats. Rahul, whose entitlement always filters through his aggressive propaganda, has started claiming to have great knowledge of Hinduism and has always tied himself in knots. In this debate, again he, or rather his speech writers, borrowed references from Ramayana. However, as always, it only exposed Rahul’s lack of understanding and knowledge of Hinduism. He claimed that Ravan used to listen to both Meghnath and Kumbhkaran. There is factually no basis to this claim that these two evil partners of Demon King Ravan, one his son and another his brother, tried to give him good advice. Going by Valmiki Ramayan, Marich advised Ravan against kidnapping Sita, and Jatayu opposed Ravan.
In the 52nd Chapter of Sundar Kand, Vibhishan advises Ravan against killing Hanuman as an envoy of Shri Ram. Ravana agrees with him. In Yuddh Kand, Vibhishan tried to persuade Ravan to return Sita with respect back to Shri Ram. Then in the Twenty-Second Chapter, Ravan calls all his ministers for their suggestions. In this meeting, Ravan confesses that he did not have any opportunity to discuss with them or Kumbhkaran earlier about the matter of the abduction of Sita. The question of Ravan not taking the advice of Meghnad and Kumbhkaran does not arise. Meghnad, in fact, was very vocal about supporting Ravan in his act. It was with his support, Ravan exiled Vibhishan.
In Chapter 63 of the Yuddh Kand, Kumbhkaran is woken up to fight and while he does tell Ravan the mistake he had done in his pride and arrogance of power, he accepts whatever has happened, has happened, now I too want to end Shri Ram and Lakshman. The reference that Rahul tries to make in a visible effort to establish his dubious Hindu credentials, does not stand to factual scrutiny.
Given that Congress understood that they did not have the numbers to bring Modi Government down, it would have looked better on their part if Rahul Gandhi had spent this opportunity to express sympathy towards the casualties of tribal violence in Manipur and listened to the steps Government has taken and intended to take to bring normalcy to the terror-hit region. To make things worse, Rahul left the parliament when PM Modi started speaking, in between, he walked back in, but when PM’s speech neared the topic of Manipur, they staged a walkout again. Even to a Manipuri, this would have signalled how Rahul Gandhi merely wanted to gain limelight from the embers of dying cremation fires in Manipur violence and had no interest in knowing how the fire can be doused.
Earlier, Amit Shah covered the factual data on steps the Government had taken in Manipur and pointed out that worse violence from the same state, under the previous Congress regime, went unnoticed. What I noticed was, that in today’s global world, where a case in Manipur evokes a statement in the European Union Parliament and triggers a chain of articles in global media, it is important for us to have a standardised monthly briefing from the Government through an appointed professional spokesperson to avoid misinformation campaigns.
All in all, BJP got an opportunity to kickstart its campaign for 2024, and if Congress wanted to use this no-confidence as an opportunity to kickstart Rahul Gandhi’s campaign for 2024, they messed it up royally and the onus largely rests on Rahul Gandhi.
Rahul Gandhi has come out of it as an insensitive politician, an entitled brat and an unread Hindu if he claims to be one.