Had the Congress party president actually read the Mahabharata and dispassionately examined his own record, he would have come to the opposite conclusion.
A section of the commentariat has been lapping up Rahul Gandhi’s remarks referring to the Congress party as the ‘Pandavas’ fighting for ‘truth’ while the BJP as the ‘Kauravas’ striving for ‘power’. Had the Congress party president actually read the Mahabharata and dispassionately examined his own record, he would have come to the opposite conclusion.
The Adi Parvan of the Mahabharata quite eloquently describes how the Pandavas, after the death of their legal but not biological father Pandu, returned to Hastinapur from the Shatashringa hills in the Himalayas. The entitled dynast Duryodhana is aghast at the possibility of his cousins who are clad in deerskin and bark sharing the same royal palace as him. Does that not remind you uncannily of how Manishankar Aiyar (another entitled scion of a wealthy family and an alumnus of the prestigious Doon School) and Priyanka Gandhi described the incumbent Prime Minister as ‘neech’— a barb that was a thinly veiled but unmistakable reference to Modi’s humble origins.
The similarities do not end here. Once the princes come of age, Yudhishthira is anointed as the crown prince of Hastinapura because of widespread public demand even as Duryodhana is passed over despite the fact that his claim to the throne is as strong as that of Yudhishthira given that his father Dhritarashtra is the older legal offspring of the previous King Vichitraveerya. (This chain of events bear an uncanny similarity to the general election of 2014). Duryodhana does not stop scheming though. He first tries to have the Pandavas burnt alive in the Varnavata inferno. Then finally, with the connivance of Dhritarashtra, he manages to have the kingdom of Kurujaangala divided into two portions Khandavaprastha and Hastinapura. Even today, the Congress party-led by Rahul Gandhi is actively trying to exploit fault lines of caste (Gujarat, Haryana and Maharashtra) and language (Karnataka) just so they can hold onto power whatever be the consequence of the same for the body politic at large.
Furthermore, Duryodhana just like Rahul Gandhi was not very good at fighting battles up until his final confrontation with Bhim. Even during his first ‘convocation’ battle with the Panchala King Drupada’s army, the Kaurava Prince is recorded as having fled the battlefield. There are many such instances in the Mahabharata. Finally, after his entire army is vanquished on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, he hides in a lake before the Pandavas find him and confront him.
Rahul Gandhi, if I am permitted the indulgence of using a colloquial Indian English expression, is ‘same to same’. Not only is he pathetic at his supposed area of core competence; i.e. winning elections (thirty odd already lost at last count?), he also shares Duryodhana’s habit of leaving his troops/workers in the lurch and gallivanting off to exotic locales. His latest disappearing act which coincided with the Congress party’s humiliating election defeat in the northeast is still fresh in public memory.
Even the Congress party feels like the Kaurava army, as described in the Mahabharata. A few ageing but formidable stalwarts who are constantly humiliated by the incompetent and entitled dynastic scion leading an unmotivated army beset with problems of indiscipline could be an apt description of both the Congress party and the Kaurava army. At least Duryodhana had some talented non-dynastic young warriors like Karna and Ashwatthama on his side. Rahul Gandhi seems to specialise in pushing out leaders like Himanta Biswa Sarma to take a representative example to the other side.
Finally, those who have read the Mahabharata would know that it describes events that took place at the dawn of the Kaliyuga at the end of Dwapara Yuga! If one takes the poet at face value, Lord Krishna had himself descended upon the earth to ensure the victory of the Pandavas and of Dharma itself. However, the present age is Kaliyuga and one defining characteristic of this age is that God does not incarnate in human form to establish Dharma. It is, therefore, now up to the people of India to decide as to whether they want the entitled dynastic scions like Rahul Gandhi, the Scindias and the Pilots of the world to rule the country or if they want the honest salt of the earth leadership of the BJP to have another shot at power in 2019.
Raghav Awasthi is an advocate and an RSS member.