The art of political one downmanship

The art of political one downmanship

Appreciate the value of nuance, Rahul Gandhi.

If there is something called political one-upmanship, how can there not be its inverse, political one-downmanship? If there is one Indian politician who is determined to plumb this question to the depths, it is Rahul Gandhi. On his recent European tour, he said many things that made perfect sense, but managed to obscure them with some statements that have laid himself open to criticism and ridicule. One statement was that the Congress was not involved in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 in Delhi. Another gave a simplistic explanation for the rise of terror in the name of Islam. Neither advanced his party’s political fight against the BJP or his own stature as a leader.

Did the Congress party take a decision to carry out the anti-Sikh pogrom in Delhi, after two Sikh bodyguards shot dead Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in cold blood? It did not. But the Congress was in power and in a position to have galvanised the state machinery to stop the riots, killing and looting that broke out. Many Congress leaders have been implicated in the riots and face charges. Rajiv Gandhi’s statement that it is but natural that the earth should tremble a when a big tree falls, seemed to justify the violence and cannot be edited out of history. Congress leaders have since apologised for the riots. And Sikhs have voted for the Congress in Delhi and in Punjab, time and again, and no one thinks that the Congress nurses a programme of violence against the Sikhs or that the Sikhs are insecure under Congress rule. By absolving the Congress, instead of pointing this out, Gandhi did himself and his party no service.

That discrimination and deprivation can lead to alienation in which extremist ideologies breed easily is a truism. But from that, to strip the origin of the Islamic State of its historical and ideological specificity is to sound banal while warning against policies that breed alienation in India. Ideologies can ferment in some fertile brains at any point of time in any condition, but the point is about their striking a popular chord. Gandhi needs more nuance, to come up tops rather than beleaguered.