The Child,” sang William Wordsworth, “is father of the Man.” The line came back to me over the ruckus kicked up because Rahul Gandhi dismissed as “complete nonsense” his government’s decision to pass, as an ordinance, a bill that was referred to a parliamentary standing committee. It did not need Sherlock Holmes to discover that the ruse was being resorted to because judgment was in the immediate offing in regard to a case relating to a valuable UPA partner.
I was put in mind of three similar incidents involving Rahul’s father, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. After his first meeting as chairman of the Planning Commission, Rajiv had dismissed its members as “a bunch of jokers”. This hit the headlines, leading to the deputy chairman (the same hapless Manmohan Singh) tendering his resignation. Rajiv did not accept the resignation and fell in with Mwalimu Julius Nyerere’s request that the good doctor’s services be offered for a high-profile assignment as secretary-general of the South Commission. Later, on learning in March 1991 of the terrible state of the economy under Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar, Rajiv asked me to call on Singh and arrange for him to brief Rajiv, then leader of opposition. That led to Singh becoming, first, the much celebrated finance minister who introduced economic reforms, and then the longest serving continuous PM after Jawaharlal Nehru.
The “joker” remark led to participative development and inclusive growth, climaxing in the drafting of two major constitutional amendments on panchayats and nagarpalikas that are the most enduring memorials of Rajiv’s legacy. So, too, could the “nonsense” remark mark the milestone that drove the Congress back to principle in politics. For, after all, Rahul added in words that are far less quoted, “It is time to stop this nonsense. Political parties, mine and all others, we cannot continue making these small compromises. Because if we make these small compromises, then we compromise everywhere. That is why what our government has done so far as this ordinance is concerned is wrong.”
Rajiv also drew flak for dismissing foreign secretary A.P. Venkateswaran at a press conference, that too in reply to a Pakistani correspondent. What was dismissed as irrelevant then is that the secretary had overstepped his brief on a visit a few days earlier to Pakistan and announced, much to the embarrassment of the PM, that he was scheduling a visit to Pakistan―a highly sensitive matter with political overtones. Rajiv had disciplined a police officer, a close relative, who had bungled security arrangements at Rajghat, a bungling that almost resulted in the assassination of both the President and the Prime Minister. He also suspended the principal information officer for prematurely announcing the death of Jagjivan Ram, and the Delhi police commissioner for almost getting Mikhail Gorbachev’s car smashed at the T-junction in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Rahul is not “undermining” either his PM or his government but only righting a wrong. Would circumlocution have achieved what a single word succeeded in focusing? What is it that ultimately matters―style or substance?
The third incident is Rajiv's celebrated address to the centenary session of the Congress. Instead of paeans of praise to his family and his party, Rajiv thundered: “We have looked at others. Now let us look at ourselves. Instead of a party that fired the imagination of the masses, we have shrunk, losing touch with the toiling millions. Millions of ordinary Congress workers are handicapped, for, on their backs ride the brokers of power and influence, who dispense patronage to convert a mass movement into a feudal oligarchy, enmeshing the living body of the Congress in their net of avarice.” The audience comprised precisely the “brokers of power” he was berating. And why? Only to wake up the Congress to the critical need to reinvent itself. To identify the distinction between right and wrong, whatever its electoral consequences, is what distinguishes a statesman from a mere politician, and a leader from his flock.
Aiyar, former Union minister, is an MP and a social commentator.