Sonia and Rahul played the victim card in the National Herald case to garner public sympathy. With one addition to their whining and wailing culture: Chest-thumping.

by Ashok Singh

No whining, no wailing. Just silence and a cold stare at a reporter when the Congress president Sonia Gandhi emerged out of a meeting over tea at 24, Akbar Road — the Congress headquarters — where senior leaders had gathered on the occasion of the party’s 131st Foundation Day.

On that very day, Congress Darshan, a party journal published and edited by Sanjay Nirupam, Mumbai Regional Congress Committee head, in an anonymous article, had shaken the basis on which the Congress superstructure stood. It had ripped apart the party’s most shining icon Jawaharlal Nehru’s policies on Kashmir, Tibet and China. The article had projected Sardar Patel as a more sagacious, wise leader than Nehru. It had also linked the Congress’s president Sonia Gandhi’s father, as a soldier in Mussolini’s army, to Italian fascism.

The Congress hadn’t had, perhaps, a worse tribute paid on its Foundation Day by the party’s own mouthpiece. The Congress’s very legacy had been torn apart.

The writer had hit the party where it hurt the most. And there was a clever method in the manner the focus of attack was chosen: Nehru’s legacy, Sardar Patel’s wisdom over Nehru’s impulsive actions and Sonia’s, as well as her family’s past, something the party very zealously guards and keeps under wraps.

Wasn’t it the Congress’s case since it lost power that the BJP under the Prime Minister Narendra Modi was out to bring Nehru down from the high pedestal? That a deliberate effort was being made to re-evaluate Nehru with a Hindutva agenda in mind? That Patel was being given a more hallowed place in history books than Nehru? And wasn’t fascism a cuss word Congress used during most of 2015 to beat the Modi government with?

But there was no loud wailing by the family when the shoe was on the other foot. They didn’t cry conspiracy.

As the year winds to a close, the image of whining and wailing by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi flashes through one’s mind. His political discourse was dominated by persistent complaints and grievances throughout 2015. Voicing grievances to show that the mother-son duo is under attack by the government is a clever political strategy to win sympathy of the people.

The members of the Nehru-Gandhi family have always done this to maintain their stranglehold over the party and power. One has got so used to them playing victimhood in politics that one conjures up image of them whining and wailing whenever they face criticism or when they see a perceived wrong being done to them.

The Congress’s first family has played the 'politics of victimhood' to the fullest, has used it as a political weapon to their best advantage since the days of Indira Gandhi. She used ‘us versus them’ (them as in entire Opposition and all those who questioned her) policy as a political metaphor to demonise her political opponents. For her, all those who weren’t with her were the ‘Other’ who had to be despised, opposed and fought. Any criticism of her was interpreted as attack on India’s ‘sovereignty and integrity’. India is Indira and Indira is India slogan was its logical extension.

Rajiv Gandhi used it when he came under attack on the Bofors gun corruption charges. Like his mother, the Congress and family retainers equated any criticism of Rajiv Gandhi as attack not on him as an individual, a leader or as a Prime Minister but an attack on India’s integrity. The country is not safe except in the hands of the Nehru-Gandhi family becomes Congress’s party refrain when the family faces attack.

Sonia and Rahul played the victim card in the National Herald case to garner public sympathy. With one addition to their whining and wailing culture: Chest-thumping.

Expect Rahul Gandhi to whine and wail more in the New Year. Wait to see him keep playing to the gallery by enacting a victim’s role. And wait to see that woefully limit the possibility of consensus and compromise between the government and the opposition.

For once, though, they might be right. India will suffer more in 2016.