On the Disqualification of Rahul Gandhi
The conviction of Rahul Gandhi must bring to the fore the absurdity that is ‘criminal defamation’. It will rest on the books of law, undisturbed. However, so far as this scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is concerned, I do not think he shall be imprisoned. Parameshwara forbid if any of us canaille should so be convicted in the future, we might not enjoy the privilege of not being imprisoned. For there emerges the prospect of having to share prison space with the scum of society — unhygienic convicts, possibly of questionable pedigree, with sweat finding permanent refuge in their facial hair. Or, the equally worse prospect of having to confront corrupt, abusive policemen, with imprecations hurled at your mother or your sister sullying every sentence of their already rude and rustic speech, prepared to inflict violence on you, scarring you, possibly for life. Such prospects must petrify anyone accustomed to the rarity that is civilized life in an otherwise chaotic republic.
It is the opinion of former Attorney General, Mukul Rohatgi, that any such disqualification has immediate effect; it needs not any notification. That the event is eloquent of the BJP’s attempts to wreck the standard of rebellion raised by Rahul Gandhi, therefore, is platitudinous political tripe.
The saga has unfolded in a rather interesting manner. Some analysts far better informed on the matter than myself, and I have no pretensions of intellectualism, are of opinion that utter dilettantes were deputed to argue Rahul Gandhi’s side in the Surat court that convicted him. This is a matter of surprise, for the Congress boasts of an army of competent lawyers.
Two may be the views taken of this fact. One is that taken by journalist Pallavi Ghosh, whose remit it has been since 2004 to specifically cover the Congress, and she ascribes it to nonchalance on part of the senior membership of that party. It would be a reasonable inference that the bravado expressed in the media by this membership is so crafted as to assure the ingenuous rank and file of the party, that believes, presumably, that they are participants in a ‘National Movement 2.0’ to restore India to democracy, that has fallen to the BJP’s forces of tyranny. My own understanding is that, the impassioned rank and file now assuaged, senior membership may look forward to reaping political benefits for the party from such disqualification. Anil Antony, former member of the Congress, concurs with Pallavi.
Commentators such as Suhel Seth and Abhijit Iyer-Mitra view this differently. It is difficult to tell whether they are merely being humorous in their suggestion of the event as a conspiracy from within the Congress to disempower Rahul Gandhi, who is a liability to the party. No serious analyst could argue otherwise than along the line that he is a liability, for he is indeed blissfully oblivious to the national zeitgeist. Had better sense prevailed, he would have been keenly alive to the perception in the electorate of his passionate comments at Cambridge.
There is still much sentimentality in India anent the British Raj, and so for him to bemoan the supposed loss of India’s democracy in Britain of all places builds a negative opinion of him and of the party. It might have merited the indifference of the electorate, had he been an ‘intellectual’; it is perhaps reasonable in India to use ‘churl’ as a synonym for the average legacy ‘intellectual’, whose sole purpose in life after 2014 has been to paint a fine dystopian artwork of India, but for a Member of Parliament to indulge in that pleasure must stir the concern alike of us masses and of the ruling classes. To use our constitutional machinery to correct our ways is expected; to sing its baseless elegies in foreign lands is reproachable. Rendering matters worse is the fact that Anglophone countries take seriously the insinuation that democracy is on the wane in a third-world country, and therefore look with maternal tenderness at the opportunity of effecting a regime change in said country.
It is possible that the Congress has considered all of this. It is possible, therefore, that its nonchalance anent the case was calculated. It may not result in any great diminution in Rahul Gandhi’s influence in the party, but it might serve to send a subtle message. A faint hope may be expressed that saner currents of thought, revitalized, flow henceforth in the Congress.
