I have met Rahul Gandhi only once. That was an accidental meeting, when my wife and I went to the lobby attached to the central pavilion of the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Delhi on the occasion of the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games, 2010.
I introduced myself and he asked me, “Do you feel relieved now?”
I said, “Not yet. Only when the Games end.”
A year later, I was back in Thiruvananthapuram and lost my connection with Delhi. From afar, and as a common citizen, it is perhaps easier to dispassionately view the evolution of a public figure. There were the early days when he worked more like a social activist than a politician. He visited villages, stayed overnight and fearlessly went into crowds.
His mother was afraid as his security was at risk. The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, told me and I called the head of the Special Protection Group, Bharat Wanchoo. Those were the days when the villagers of Bhatta Parsaul, two villages in UP, went up in arms against land acquisition by the government. Rahul decided to visit the villages and made some strong statements.
“I feel ashamed to call myself Indian after seeing what has happened here. The (state) government here has unleashed atrocities on its own people,” he had said.
He even thought of spending the night in the village, which caused great anxiety to Wanchoo, who told me he was even prepared to pick him up forcibly and bring him back to Delhi. Fortunately, the Uttar Pradesh Police intervened and returned him to Delhi. In those days, Rahul visited villages, ate with villagers, stayed overnight, and even washed under a tap in the open.
In 2013, he went one step further.
The Supreme Court had ordered that legislators who were found guilty in a criminal case and sentenced to two years imprisonment should be disqualified immediately by the legislature. The UPA government at the time, sought to overturn this through an ordinance. The government of the day was already under siege with allegations of corruption piling on them, which they were not able to defend with conviction. This new move created a further furore. Sitting in Thiruvananthapuram, I watched Ajay Maken on TV feebly defending the ordinance to reporters.
Along came a call from Rahul to Maken, saying that he would join the press conference himself. He came, and he expressed himself fiercely against the ordinance. He said the ordinance was complete nonsense and that it should be “torn and thrown out”. He then went on to symbolically tear up a piece of paper.
Ajay Maken, and indeed the government itself, had to beat a hasty retreat. It is now, of course, well known that the ordinance, if it had gone through and become law, might have saved him from disqualification.
Photo: Twitter/@shashank_ssj
It was clear at the time that, while he thought he was setting new standards of political behaviour, politics was not his cup of tea.
He would have been better prepared had he shown any inclination to acquire experience in the cut and thrust of governance. He could have learnt the ropes serving as a minister in Manmohan Singh’s cabinet. Or he could have assumed control of the organisation of the Commonwealth Games, as his father did of the Asian Games. The naivete that led him to impulsive political action and his perceived susceptibility to sycophancy would have rubbed off as he came face to face with realpolitik.
The Modi victory in 2014 was for him a major setback. His weaknesses were exposed remorselessly by the successor government. His frequent, unexplained foreign visits cast doubts on his seriousness as a political aspirant. Somewhere along the line, the moralistic jholawala approach was jettisoned for a strong anti-Modi stance. Even this did not carry conviction.
At the end of a tirade in parliament, he chose to go and hug Modi, expressing love for him and followed this up by going back to his seat and winking at Jyotiraditya Scindia, a wink that was vividly captured on camera.
Rahul Gandhi hugging Narendra Modi in Lok Sabha, and winking afterwards. Credit: PTI
In the 2019 election, he led the Congress from the front. He was somehow convinced that Modi’s days were over. He repeated that frequently during his election campaign. He expressed his readiness to occupy the Prime Ministerial chair. He thought the Congress would win it alone, or at least that there would be a repeat of the 2004 model, and made no serious attempt to align with other parties even when approached by some of them.
The magnitude of the defeat, including his own defeat in Amethi, the constituency that was virtually his patrimony, must have shocked him.
Then there was a long period when he sulked quietly. At this time the government thought that they could perpetuate their rule by instilling fear into those that dared to oppose them.
In fact, there seem now to be two governments at work, one which says it is devoting itself to development and social welfare, the other intent on terrifying those who do not agree with them. To me, this is the true “double engine” government but the fact remains that the two engines are pulling in different directions and not reinforcing each other as would have been the calculation.
This gave Rahul and his comrades in arms in the opposition another opportunity to build a viable alliance, which, even if it does not win, provides enough opposition to the ruling party in parliament. The Bharat Jodo Yatra was undoubtedly an unqualified success, as Rahul walked more and talked less and showed humility and a greater willingness to talk to others who thought similarly. As he tramped across the country, overcoming cramps, braving the humid heat of the south and the bitter cold of the north, finally triumphantly unfurling the national flag in the midst of pouring rain in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk, memories of another Gandhi, who gave his life to the country, were rekindled.
This image was somewhat dented by a misguided visit to Cambridge at a time when he could have consolidated his newfound position in the political firmament.
Immediately after the long walk, the terror engine of the government went into operation, disqualifying him as an MP following a court judgment that the famed lawyer Kapil Sibal considered “bizarre”, and losing no time to issue a notice to him to vacate his house.
This led to a great opposition show of unity, which Rahul did not help by going back into his hate mode against Modi and vilifying, in the process, V.D. Savarkar, who is an icon among the Marathas. How the Rahul personality shapes up and how the government terror engine works may be significant factors in the months leading up to the 2024 general elections.
K. M. Chandrasekhar is former Cabinet Secretary of India and the author of As Good as My Word: A Memoir.