Kanhaiya Kumar has staked his claim on the leadership of the Congress Party and humiliated Rahul Gandhi on the way to it. In his first press conference, minutes after joining the Party, Kanhaiya asserted that the Congress Party needs to be saved and revived. He alleged that Congress Party is in a fragile situation, and the big ship, the GOP of India, needs revival, and action must be proactive. Rahul Gandhi has been heading the Congress Party for more than a decade in one form or another, and Kanhaiya on joining day signaled that Rahul’s leadership has not done enough to save the Congress Party from the incoming disaster. How will the scion react? He spoke about how the large vessel, the Congress Party, needs to focus its energy to lead the fight against the ruling BJP. But first, it has to be saved from the internal turmoil between the scion and the usurping sister.
The joining duo, Mewani and Kanhaiya, still in the nascent stages of their political career in a failed attempt to shame Prime Minister Modi for renouncing his marriage, also attempted to shame Lord Buddha because he also renounced his wife and did what he thought was right. It is a cheap tactic that has been used by opposition party leaders repeatedly against people who have worked their way up through devotion to the cause. Hailing Drafting committee chairman Dr B R.Ambedkar and freedom fighter M.K.Gandhi for not leaving their families during the freedom struggle, Kanhaiya also raised a question mark on the intelligence of Ambedkar, whether he made a mistake by joining Buddhism as Buddha himself left his wife.
Lord Mahavira had also renounced his family at the age of 30 to become an ascetic, leaving his wife Yashoda and daughter Anojja. Did those two commit a mistake? Should they be made to pass the opposition parties criteria of honour for their choice of renouncing their families? This great civilization of India has stood the test of times due to men like Buddha and Mahavira who did not look back or were remorseful in renouncing their families.
Kanhaiya states that he does not take BJP seriously, but then he repeatedly mentions that his whole objective to join Congress Party is to fight BJP. When words fail to match the ideology, it is a clear indication of a dishonourable ideological stand. His admittance of the left having a myopic ideology has made the left lose the perception battle. The left has always derided Gandhi, and now their blue-eyed boy has accepted Gandhian supremacy.
The lust to save the constitution from a force unknown, the fallacy that the Indian Constitution is rigid when in reality it was meant to be a living document and amendable by the same Ambedkar that they falsely swear by, is merely a dog whistle. The world has moved on in the past seven years. People choices and aspirations have changed. The problem with the Congress Party tradition is, it does not want to see India grow. They want India to be chained and struggle for housing, water, toilet, road and electricity, which they failed spectacularly in providing in the last 60 years of their rule.
Another Congress Party debutant Jignesh Mewani is a by-product of the hate and caste identity politics that Rahul Gandhi revived in Indian politics. The 2017 Gujarat experiment of Rahul Gandhi has proven to be of tremendous success. He revived the caste identity politics, which was languishing for more than a decade in 3/4 of India, except the south, which never parted ways with the caste politics. Hardik Patel was the biggest gainer of this identity politics in the last few years.
Mewani was feeling left behind, and as he accepted in the press conference that both he and the Congress Party has been courting each other for a long time, but was advised not to because Mewani would have lost his MLA seat, which he has won as an independent with full support from Congress Party. Three years ago, Mewani, in his hate-filled speech at Elgar Parishad in Pune, tried to instigate a caste war and urged people to fight on the road as electoral politics was not rewarding enough. He is the same man who failed to tolerate a national news television channel during his press conference and asked them to remove their mic. Suddenly he is projecting himself to be qualified enough to talk about freedom of the Press and liberty of individuals.
What sort of democracy does he want when he openly urges his followers to create ruckus and disturb a peaceful assembly of people in Bengaluru because the rally was of a party with whom he has a difference of opinion? These two are a danger for a unified society and healthy democracy because they stand against the very fundamentals of democracy.
Kanhaiya is from a political class that make outlandish claims and propagate fake news, all of which is the hallmark of the left political strategy and which Rahul Gandhi has co adopted with full vigour. He will claim his position in Congress Party because he has very well seen that one by one Congress young guns are leaving the Party for respect which has been denied to them in the Gandhi family orchestra for the last 20 years.
Rahul Gandhi should be extra careful of Kanhaiya because a man who can be so petty and justify removing an air conditioner from his erstwhile party office, which according to his confession, has given him everything he will do everything to undermine the scion. Kanhaiya may have just stabbed himself on his foot as Sonia Gandhi does not take lightly even to little things that may tend to go against her children.