Rahul Gandhi’s media conference on Saturday where he attacked a journalist for merely asking a routine question, is a new low even for his bottom-scraping standards. Apart from exposing his mentality,
that of a school bully and a petulant child, the 52-year-old proved one more time why he is a failed politician and why no amount of packaging, repackaging, campaigning, relaunching and window-dressing will ever change the reality.
The stage was set. All that Gandhi needed to do at the news conference was stay true to the script that his speechwriters and managers would have handed out to him, and launch the narrative that even the BJP expected of him.
But this is Rahul Gandhi, the scion of India’s political royalty whose imperial ways cannot be fathomed by mere mortals. Wearing his signature ‘hurt look’ and a snugly fitted white polo that compliments his biceps, Gandhi swaggered into the presser and let it rip.
In his own eyes, he was single-handedly slaying the media, that he considers an ally of the BJP, with ‘truth bombs’ and ‘fearlessness’, even though the world was witnessing a petulant and immature politician — who never tires of claiming that his politics is all about “love”, “listening” and “compassion” — channeling his inner frustration and bitterness in full public glare.
On BJP’s demand that Gandhi must apologise for “insulting the nation on foreign soil”, Gandhi came out with his favourite line: “My name is not Savarkar, I am Gandhi. I won’t apologise.” It is difficult to imagine a dafter statement reeking of recklessness and terrible political judgment.
Rahul’s statement gave Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde the opportunity to launch ‘Savarkar Gaurav Yatra’ and put Congress ally, the Uddhav Thackeray faction of Shiv Sena, in such a deep state of bother, that Thackeray was left with a trapeze-artist act to maintain the alliance yet shake off the slur against Savarkar, one of India’s greatest icons who is especially deeply revered in Maharashtra. It was difficult to understand what Gandhi was trying to achieve through the Savarkar slur.
Yet if that revealed a lack of political acumen, no one was prepared for the explosion ahead. To a routine question by a senior beat journalist — incidentally one who has covered the Congress party for a long time — on what he thinks of BJP’s charge that Gandhi had insulted the ‘Modi community’, Gandhi exploded into a frightful rage.
He launched a fierce attack against the journalist and accused him of working for the BJP. After heaping insults on the shocked and bemused gentleman, Gandhi rounded it off with a street cant, “Kyun hawa nikal gayi?”, a mocking half-smile dangling at the corner of his lips, reflecting absolute, hostile derision for the media person who had the temerity to ask him a question that he deemed offensive.
Gandhi wasn’t dropping a ‘truth bomb’, he was name-calling and ridiculing a journalist who was trying to do his job.
It reflected a breathtaking sense of entitlement. Gandhi behaved as if he was the feudal lord, rebuking a subject for falling out of line in his durbar where he expects nothing but homage and fealty from toadying hacks.
If this the kind of bullying attitude Gandhi shows on camera in a presser, one may only imagine the kind of arrogance and boorishness he carries off camera. Yet Gandhi’s inglorious hour was a true reflection of the man that he really is. The rebel in him sometimes seeks to break free from the simulated image of a hard-headed democrat that the party wants him to adopt. Sometimes the pretense is too heavy a cross to bear.
It must be tough for the Congress First Family to adjust to the new uncomfortable reality where journalists are not fawning courtiers of their imperial dynasty. This is a new India.
https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/b...d-simulated-image-of-a-democrat-12361752.html