New Delhi:
Narendra Modi has often attacked the Prime Minister, the Congress and the grand old party's first family. Nothing new there. But supporting the PM when he's about to meet Pakistan's prime minister in New York? Now, that's a first.
OK, it wasn't exactly support, more a stepping stone for launching into a full-fledged attack, but we could be allowed some poetic freedom to think of it as sympathy at least, if not pity. That was before his
"dehati aurat" comment.
Here is the PM, on foreign soil, recently snubbed by his own party's second-in-command, up against this virulent attack that finally turned out to be nothing more than a figment of one person's imagination. (Why the person in question attributed to Nawaz Sharif such a comment, is another eagerly awaited story altogether).
The natural question though is - how could a person, whose party invited at least three dozen embassy officials at the rally venue, carefully leaving out Pakistan from that list of invitees, blindly trust the words of one, mind you, just one copy online, without even bothering to check if it was grounded in any fact? Plainly, it seemed like- "we don't like to talk to Pakistan, we will frown over the PM's decision to meet Nawaz Sharif, but we will still selectively believe them when it suits us!" Or is it?
(Note: Not getting into the coinage of 'dehati aurat' itself. It's used here merely to reflect the hullabaloo over the comment that wasn't.)
Turning now to the other "bombshell' of the week. Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's "outburst" at the Press Club on Friday. Here's a man, whose views we are rarely certain of, but whose writ runs large in the party. Imagine the embarrassment of his own party's general secretary who changed his stand on an ordinance on convicted politicians a whole 180 degrees in just 20 odd minutes.
Yuvraj or Shahzada, as Narendra Modi christened Rahul Gandhi, had spoken and the decision was made. Those ministers who were defending the ordinance went into hiding, the allies were stumped, one minister of state even went on twitter to say he offered no view since he learned the hard way (from past experience) what speaking his mind could lead to.
Insubordination or not, insult it certainly was. Here was a law being debated, it came up in Parliament, the session was even extended to debate its provisions, but just when public opinion turned against it - the "outburst".
Some call it strategy. I think it's the knight-in-shining-armour syndrome.
The irony of his statement - he came to the Press Club and took no questions from the press. (So much for speaking his mind.)
The PM has endured a lot of accusations for his silence. I don't know if the combined impact of these two events has been the hardest to take so far. Here's a scenario where you have one official candidate for the highest office and the other unofficial - but for whom the PM himself is willing to give up his chair when he's "ready".
One who writes a letter to the PM after his outburst, another who is too busy touring India for his secure his prime ministership to notice floods back home in Gujarat. One who has to stave off allegations every day that he did not do enough to prevent communal conflict under his watch? Another who calls India's poverty a state of mind?
Add to that their statements in just the last few days and I can't decide who comes out looking worse. Can you?
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