scorecardresearch
Friday, March 29, 2024
Support Our Journalism
HomeOpinionEveryone travels, so why are we worked up over Rahul Gandhi’s holidays?

Everyone travels, so why are we worked up over Rahul Gandhi’s holidays?

Follow Us :
Text Size:

Rahul Gandhi is the face of the Congress. His words and actions have a bearing on what people think about the party.

Congressmen are clueless about the whereabouts of Rahul Gandhi, their party president. They saw him last on 20 June, a day after his 48th birthday that he celebrated in India this year.

He loves discovering the world, but his foreign vacations right before or after his birthday have been a mystery, especially because of the secrecy surrounding the destination. The NDA government has frequently accused him of neglecting the security protocol.

On his 47th birthday, Gandhi was in Italy. On the 46th, he was in India but left for a ‘short trip’ abroad the very next day. He celebrated his 45th birthday in India, a few weeks after he returned from a 56-day sabbatical abroad. He went out of the country to celebrate his 44th birthday, which came just a month after his party was reduced to a tally of 44 in the Lok Sabha.

So, does Rahul Gandhi’s preference for exotic locales for a break make him a non-serious politician as his political adversaries would have us believe? There is no black or white answer to that.

Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav is in London along with his family but nobody is cribbing. Check up on others across the political spectrum, and you may appreciate the international exposure our political class enjoys. Even Atal Bihari Vajpayee used to go on vacations, although within the country. So, why this fuss over Gandhi holidaying?

Some of the blame may lie in his packaging as a leader: an idealist who could embarrass his own party and the Prime Minister for seeking to bring an ordinance to save tainted politicians like Lalu Yadav, an angry young man who denounced the “system” (in both the Congress and the government) developed and safeguarded by his senior party colleagues and forefathers, and a rebel who stalled a big mining project in Odisha to “help” the tribals of Niyamgiri Hills even though it meant condemning them to poverty forever. How could such a leader, like other ordinary mortals, take a break and go abroad?

On a leisurely winter afternoon in 2013, Gandhi, then Congress vice-president, was interacting with a group of journos. They were asking him about his plans to arrest the continuous erosion in his party’s support base.

“How will you do it when you don’t have popular regional leaders who could disseminate your party’s ideology and programmes at the grassroots? The Congress doesn’t have such faces in states,” asked an intrepid reporter.

Gandhi heard her patiently, brooded over it for a few seconds, and then replied, “It’s not about faces, it’s about the Congress ideology. Sometimes, even one person can become the symbol of what the party stands for. Nehruji was the face. Indiraji was the face.”

“Nehruji went to jail several times during the freedom struggle, but you don’t have to go there to become the face,” he added with a smile.

He left many things unsaid but the message wasn’t lost on anyone. Five years since then, one doesn’t know whether Gandhi holds the same view. Many things have changed. The Congress is out of power at the Centre and decimated in most states. Congressmen now talk about a battle of ideologies – and not between personalities – in 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

And, Rahul Gandhi is the face of the Congress. Whether Congressmen like it or not, all his words and actions have a bearing on what people think about the party. And that’s why his latest foreign jaunt begs the question: is he serious?

If he is the face of the Congress, he can’t afford to be seen as a part-time politician, especially when pitted against 24×7 politicians like Narendra Modi, who never takes a day off – from politics or governance – and Amit Shah, who thinks and talks of politics even when he is on a treadmill.

Gandhi went to Mandsaur last year to meet the victims of the police firing on farmers and left for abroad soon after. If there was a Congress government in the state, Shah would be breathing down its neck until its ouster. Gandhi did return to Mandsaur a year later, but the momentum was gone. How would people of Karnataka think of a leader who kept governance under suspension for days because he didn’t have the time to discuss the ministerial portfolio distribution formula with chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy? Gandhi had to accompany his mother to the US for a routine medical check-up.

The president of a 133-year-old party can’t be seen changing his ideas and principles every now and then. A big advocate of internal elections to democratise the party until recently, Gandhi has chosen to abandon it and exercise his prerogative to nominate the members of the Congress Working Committee, whenever he wishes to. It has been long since one heard him talk about changing the system. And, Lalu Yadav is his close ally now.

Gandhi’s public utterances have also not helped his image as a serious politician. The president of the Congress can’t make empty threats to bring an “earthquake” to shake the Prime Minister. His claim that Modi wouldn’t be able to stand in front of him if he were to speak for 15 minutes in Parliament didn’t serve his cause either.

So, it’s not his foreign visits that rankle the Congressmen. His frequent jaunts out of the country only accentuate the impression of a restless person who doesn’t have his heart in his job. For this impression to change, Gandhi has to first start taking the job of the Congress president seriously.

Subscribe to our channels on YouTube, Telegram & WhatsApp

Support Our Journalism

India needs fair, non-hyphenated and questioning journalism, packed with on-ground reporting. ThePrint – with exceptional reporters, columnists and editors – is doing just that.

Sustaining this needs support from wonderful readers like you.

Whether you live in India or overseas, you can take a paid subscription by clicking here.

Support Our Journalism

7 COMMENTS

  1. We ae worked up not because the half Italian numb-wit going anywhere in the world secretly 0r him keeping company with or him sleeping with anybody. We are worried because Congress has made him its President and is toting as its PM candidate. We are worried that he can be black-mailed by international spy agencies like ISI and CIA who are definitely after him.

  2. Really, who cares. The less he is seen, the better it is for the country as well as the party. The party is stuck with this family and it’s coterie because of Indira Gandhi who ensured no worthwhile leader is groomed to replace her.

  3. If anybody, not necessarily the chasing papparazi , would follow the trails of not only Rahul but also Sonia Gandhi during the third/fourth weeks of June every year, they would not be surprised to find them out of India continuously on one pretext or other.

    The real reason is the duo do not want to face the critics of National Emergency Day hoisted by Indira Gandhi on its anniversary falling on 25th June every year. They have no defense to face the public wrath on this shameful event till now.

  4. Even the Lord rested on Sunday, after creating the world. Working, or claiming to, 24 / 7 is not a virtue. The mind and body both need rest and a break. But, in a poor country, the image of a leader claiming his heart beats for them taking three or four foreign holidays a year is not helpful.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Most Popular