A tale of two parties

Rahul Gandhi’s conviction by the chief magistrate of Surat Court on March 24 in a defamation case, sparked intense political debate across the nation with opposition closing ranks in a rare show of solidarity. It is ironic that Rahul who has been the cause of many opposition parties refusing to have any truck with his party the Congress, today has by default become a rallying point of the opposition who are now seeking to milk the opportunity. True, the BJP has nothing to do directly with Rahul’s conviction since it was filed by a BJP legislator Purnesh Modi whose actual surname is ‘Bhootwala’. Purnesh claimed to belong to the ‘Modi Ghanchi’ caste in Surat. Otherwise also, the BJP had shown undue haste in having Rahul disqualified-within 24 hours after conviction. This could not have come without a little bit of help from somewhere above, since nothing is done without a nod from up there. However, even on this it may be explained that BJP was only doing what it would do legally and constitutionally. If there were those who felt that Rahul and not BJP led to the current situation, the urban ministry proved them wrong when it issued a notice on Rahul to vacate the MP bungalow within April 22. All these prove that BJP only responded by going for Rahul and the Congress’ jugular. Rahul had often crossed the line when attacking Modi and one such was his infamous remark ‘chowkidar chor hai’ which he coined against during 2018-19 to impute that Modi had stolen money etc from the Rafale deal and also the escalating consumer prices. When asked to prove his accusation, Rahul claimed that the Supreme Court itself had clearly stated that Modi had committed theft in the Rafale deal. When faced with contempt proceedings, Rahul had to eat humble pie and apologise to the court for his damaging remark. He was lucky to have escaped with a reprimand. Rahul’s language while attacking rivals have more often than not, brought huge embarrassment to the Congress. Even in the current defamation conviction (on why all thieves have Modi surname) Rahul put up a defiant tone by saying he will never say sorry about what he said unlike Veer Savarkar (the founder of Hindu Mahasabha and forerunner of the BJP/RSS). This invited a strong reaction from Uddhav Thackeray whose Shiv Sena party had formed the MVA coalition in Maharashtra against the BJP. Rahul’s boastful remark even led Shard Pawar to slam Rahul. On the other hand, if Rahul’s remarks are defamatory then with the same yardstick, the hate speeches by BJP leaders against the Nehru-Gandhi family and Congress are no less or if not worse than. If politicians and political parties continue to file defamation cases then Indian courts will have little time for other issues. Rahul is immature and incapable of leading the Congress and instead his party has to defend him after every remark. Similarly, the ruling BJP is acting like a desperate opposition party with even the prime minister and his ministers devoting more time with vitriolic attacks against Congress and opposition parties. The world is watching Indian democracy today and sees that while Rahul is doing disservice to the Congress, the BJP leaders are also doing great disservice to Indian democracy.