Like truth, lies also have a way. The mother and son duo of the Congress party and their courtiers have repeated ad nauseum in every political forum that will bother to hear them, that a politics of hate and divisiveness have been unleashed on the country and India has become a worse place to live and do politics in, post May 2014. A deep state as Mr. Gurumurthy calls it, put in place by the party during the long years that it has been in power, ensures that these orchestrated campaigns against the Modi government and BJP in general and Modi in particular, continue to occupy the centre stage at any point of time.
In India, politicians have always counted on the short memory of the public, more so the Congress. In a recent public interaction in Singapore, the new Congress president is heard saying that he practices politics of love and not hate. He goes on to project himself in the sort of a modern day Messaiah where he is the person ever-ready to forgive even those who hate him (he has forgiven even his father’s killers). The video of the event was put out by none other than his own party. It is another matter that the video turns out to be a heavily edited one.
I don’t know whether he was convincing in his act or not; but when a person who criticizes the “hugplomacy” of the PM talks about hugging even those who are opposed to him, it is natural that it sounds hollow. It is an affront to the intelligence of his audience that he thinks he sounded genuine.
The hate campaign unleashed against Modi by his family and party is neither new nor forgotten. We do remember the “Maut Ka Saudagar”, jibe from his mother, “Khoon Ki Dalali”, from his own love filled mouth, not to forget the other choicest words from his chosen minions. The most recent one is the jibe of “Chhota Modi”. Is this politics of love? To be fair, there is no dearth of back handed compliments from the BJP too. But to my knowledge, neither the BJP nor the PM have taken a moral high ground as Mr. Gandhi has. In fact, Mr. Modi has clearly acknowledged that in the heat of elections, a lot that is undesirable is uttered by all sides when he was talking about simultaneous elections. In other words, he was taking ownership for what he said and did.
On the other hand, it is not new for Mr. Gandhi’s party and himself to indulge in a first serve of hatred and when given right back, cry hoarse about intolerance, hate, vendetta and divisiveness. So much for his politics of love.
