Er P L Khushu
Birds of the same feather flock together, is what Rahul Gandhi is conveying through this self-styled T-shirt voyage through the orchids of India. India, the ‘Bharat’, is fully consolidated and united with the angelic leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. All those, amongst the political clans of dual interests, who had in the past divided India in the name of cast, religion and region, for their vote bank politics, are attendees and voyagers in this so called Gandhi Yatra. Self seekers and self employed political leaders of the day compare this excursion voyage with the similar synonymous Yatras of the great son of the soil the Mahatma Gandhi of the pre independence times of India. It is big sin to do so. The great Mahatma was a selfless leader of the masses of India, who had attained bigger heights in his political voyage to get India liberated from the clutches of the British. His spiritual attainments as a leader of the Indian masses had risen to very big heights, when he would mostly move naked, having abandoned all the passion of materialistic pursuits and interests of life. What a contrast and diffusion? Rahul Gandhi has launched the 3,500 kilometers nationwide so-called Bharat Jodo Yatra, from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. Rahul Gandhi’s advisors seem to have convinced him that a much publicized nationwide foot march Padayatra, is the best way to elevate him and his march to the same level as the Dandi march, undertaken by M K Gandhi, almost a century back. A maniac thought, while comparing the ‘Dandi-March’ with this ‘ Yatra’. A wishful day-dreaming by sycophants around Rahul Gandhi and his coterie of sycophants. Such like propositions by the kitchen cabinet of Gandhi’s is almost like performing the last rites of the congress party, which is its own architect of its present doom. Congress has almost shrunk. A symbolic ‘Yatra’ across the contours of India should have been led by some other matured congress leader, other than Rahul Gandhi, from the residual lot of the congress men who are still clinched to this dynasty dominated political party of India. Rahul Gandhi is ridiculing his political ridicule to the mock and the jocular clapping of the Indians across the country. God save the king, the king is dead; a famous proverb fits in here. What has this so-called ‘T Shirt’ enamored Yatra achieved so far? Its drumbeaters are punching their breasts with the hoax slogans of removing hate from the country. Hate against whom. It is their own hate against their own selves. The often-repeated slogan ‘Congress – Mukt- Bharat, since 2014, by the majority of Indians, when congress lost its elections and the government badly, is probably now coming as a truth and not a fallacy. It was looking like a joke at that point of time, when one could hardly visualize that the condition of the congress party will be so much implacable that it can hardly find a full-fledged congress president, which they have found now, within their own inner coterie and yes-men. Unfortunate for the nation about such a party, which is as old as the independence movement of India and supposed to deliver better, as a prudent and reliable opposition party, both in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha? Democracy and its intrinsic values demand that for a better governance, by a ruling party particularly with a sizeable majority, that there should be a healthy and a meaningful opposition party to serve as a watch dog for the ruling party, in its disposition of various policies and programs for the welfare of the people of the country. But unfortunately it is squarely missing because of the dissent, chaos, fusion and confusion in the congress party, which was supposed to be a leading opposition party. The high command of Congress during Nehru era used to be an elite conglomeration of prized politicians of highest political and democratic wisdom. It was carried forward for a major time by Indira Gandhi as well, to a larger extent till she succumbed to the lure and lust of adhering to political power through the arm of dynastic web, when she imposed emergency in the country for remaining in power perpetually, after her election was declared null and void by the high court. In this process of trying to stick to the political power perpetually, she throttled and choked the voice of media, along with circumventing the constitution to her taste of retaining the power and got almost each and every political entity and member of the opposition parties tied to jails for longer durations beyond imagination. It was a havoc unleashed across the country during that period of the imposition of emergency across the country. Nevertheless, it did not last long. She lost the reins of power miserably when the elections were held subsequently, reducing the Congress party to a big minority. In fact, the die was first cast during that period only which saw Congress mostly declining from time to time, when it has now been routed from its base in this country. The present Congress high command is reduced to just three creatures of mother and her two progenies, viz the Queen, the Raj Kumar and a Raj Kumari. Once the Raj Kumar was tried by his fosters to lead the congress party, it ended in a fiasco. He dwelled on abusing Modi with untruths and dismal utterances not befitting a person who had a chance through proxy to lead a national political party of great name and fame. Nevertheless, he lost the bus due to his own incompetence and immaturity to handle such a post. In fact he got defame and disrepute to the party which the party is still not able to come out of. He was even pulled up by the highest judiciary of this country too and advised to behave. Congress is facing a countrywide identity crisis with the party not having come up with enough numbers to even qualify as an opposition party in the polls. They are reduced to just almost fifties in the parliament. Six years after the party’s electoral rout pushed it into a continuing downward spiral, 23 senior leaders of the Congress, including five former Chief Ministers, many Congress Working Committee members, sitting MPs, and several former Union Ministers, have, in an unprecedented pushback, sent a letter to party chief calling for sweeping changes, from top to bottom. The letter, learnt to have been sent some time back, details a reforms agenda that is, in effect, a stinging indictment of the current leadership. This letter of dissent mentions that the revival of the Congress is ‘a national imperative’ fundamental to the health of democracy. It is now a situation of leadership crisis in the Congress, which is now manifesting in a farcical battle of the generations. The fact, India’s Grand Old Party seems unable to look beyond ‘the family’. The cognizant group of 23 senior Congress leaders, including former chief ministers, Union ministers and party general secretaries, are calling for ideological clarity, an overhaul of the party’s organization and addressing the leadership vacuum. The winner takes it all. So is the case with the, 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections when Narendra Modi tsunami dismantled the entire opposition barring a couple of states where regional satraps still rule the roost. The mandate was not only for Prime Minister but also a referendum on Rahul Gandhi’s leadership and acceptance as a leader who cannot replace Modi. The mandate shows that people not only rejected Rahul Gandhi but also the top brass of the Congress. Has the Raj Kumar of Congress party, Rahul Gandhi become a liability for this grand old party? With this degree of performance, can Rahul Gandhi continue to successfully function and lead the party as also day dream for becoming the prime ministerial candidate of Congress party for the coming national elections of 2024. Should he quit and make way for some other deserving candidate? Will the mother, son and the daughter trio allow it to happen? It is question bigger than its size. Will this ‘Yatra’ help him? Distinctly not. Veterans in the party having been sidelined are on the fence watching the doom of their party due to dynastic holds of this party. 35 per cent MPs/ MLAs, who switched parties between 2014-2022, joined BJP, when the prominent defectors were from Congress. Kapil Sibal a vocal and a prominent member of G-23 said that he wants a ‘Sab ki Congress’ and expressed that the ‘Gandhis’ should step aside’. “Leadership is in cuckoo land. I want a ‘Sab ki Congress’. Some want a ‘Ghar ki Congress’,” Sibal told the media, adding that Gandhis should step aside and give some other leader a chance to lead the party. Ghulam Nabi Azad a veteran congress leader and giant Muslim face of congress has been shown the door with humiliation. The Congress party is its own biggest enemy, bogged down by dynastic ruler ship with an organizational dysfunction, a pathological aversion to change, for reasons to retain power on dynastic legacy, apart from a culture of sycophancy. With much of its traditional support base heavily eroded and nobody new coming on board, Congress is playing to an empty house. The truth is that the party is absurdly out of touch with the new political landscape and it is not even trying to get its head around it seriously, hoping that the electorate believing in congress is still the same ignorant lot who will get them back in their laps. It has not worked so far, and it is not likely to work in future. The flora of a garden gets its shine of worth and a smell of ecstatic aroma with the seedlings it is planted with. Once such seedlings are mutilated and out of functional base, such a garden is thus going to prove as a liability for its worth, as it has no charm of attracting others. That is the case with the present Congress, when the seedlings which are adorning it are either foreign to it or are of weak genetic formation to grow to a full size to magnify the glory of this garden, to its original grace. How will any nationwide ‘Yatra’ help it, when the masses are disgruntled. By the second decade of the 21st century, the resurgent BJP led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and then with the people amelioration akin policies of Narendra Damodardas Modi, has altered India’s political landscape. They dismissed the English-speaking lot as Macaulay’s children and replaced the external view of country for adhesive growth, with an internal gaze founded on ‘Sab-Ka-Sath’, Sab-Ka-Vikas’, Sab-Ka-Vishwas’ and now ‘Sab-Ka-Prayas’. It has been done on the ground, for the people of India, when it is visible today by its acceptance by the people though the force of ballot. BJP won in Rae Bareli and Amethi too, a onetime strong zones congress held. This is where the cast and region supported politics has seen its burial. These bright and sound election results in favor of BJP, particularly with its repeat shows the popularity of BJP under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi, which shows a bright future and a perspective for the general elections of the country which are to come in the year 2024. These results are a signal towards the fact that people of India want BJP rule under Modi for this country, which has performed a herculean task for the nation to put it on a development path in all respects without any cast or color based considerations. This ‘T-Shirt’ so called Bharat Jodo Yatra is now entering Jammu and Kashmir. First and foremost thing to do in this regard for the congress is to set its house in order in Jammu and Kashmir, as it is still smarting under the deadly blow delivered to it by Azad. An organizationally weak congress without a credible leader in the UT will only become a liability for such a so-called ‘Yatra’. As already mentioned above the ‘Birds of the same feather flock Together’, National Conference patriarch Farooq Abdullah and his son Omar Abdullah have announced their participation in the Yatra. This is the compulsion of time. They have no other choice. They will repeat that this ‘Yatra’ will remove hate in this country, referring it to the present BJP rule. Should they shed some crocodile tears for the displaced Kashmiri Pandits too who are suffering due to their hate and regression for them? Let them feel shy, before they walk with the ‘T-Shirt’ Bharat Jodo Yatra. In Uttar Pradesh, none of the key opposition parties have attended it, though Congress had extended invitation to the Samajwadi Party, Jayant Chaudhary’s Rashtriya Lok Dal and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party.
(The author is a chartered consultant civil engineer, passionately attached and devoted to his motherland – Jammu & Kashmir).
