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Five takeaways from Rahul Gandhi’s open letter

Rahul Gandhi reiterated his resignation as Congress president and posted a four-page letter on his Twitter handle explaining his decision.

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New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s letter posted on Twitter Wednesday afternoon betrays the utter helplessness of an opposition leader who felt betrayed by everyone and everything around him — his party colleagues, the Election Commission and other institutions, and his inability to counter Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s all-pervasive influence in his fight for the idea of India.

Here are five takeaways from his letter.

To Gandhi, it’s another ‘sacrifice’

Gandhi feels his resignation as Congress president is another sacrifice by his family — the others being the sacrifice of lives by Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi for the country, and his mother Sonia Gandhi’s decision not to become prime minister after winning the 2004 Lok Sabha elections.

The sense of sacrifice is reflected clearly in the last three sentences of his four-page letter: “It is a habit in India that the powerful cling to power; no one sacrifices power. But we will not defeat our opponents without sacrificing the desire for power and fighting a deeper ideological battle. I was born a Congressman… (the party) is my life’s blood and forever that way it shall remain.”

Lack of faith in the election verdict

Unlike other opposition leaders, Gandhi doesn’t raise questions about the electronic voting machines (EVMs) in his letter, but throws enough hints about his suspicion about the lack of fairness in the elections.

Stating that the Congress didn’t fight against the BJP but against the “entire machinery of the Indian state”, he raises, though obliquely, questions about the fairness of “arbiters” such as a free press, an independent judiciary and an objective and neutral Election Commission.

“There is a real danger that from now on, elections will go from being a determinant of India’s future to a mere ritual,” he writes.

Betrayal by party veterans

Gandhi says he fought against the prime minister, the RSS and the institutions “they have captured”. “At times, I stood completely alone and am extremely proud of it,” he writes in the letter, suggesting he felt his party colleagues didn’t back him in his fight against the BJP.

At the first Congress Working Committee after elections where he had offered to resign, Gandhi had suggested as much, expressing bitterness about the way he was compelled by his senior colleagues to give party tickets to their children. “Numerous people will have to be made accountable for the failure of 2019,” Gandhi writes.

Gandhi can do no wrong

He may have resigned citing “accountability” for the electoral drubbing of the party, but the outgoing Congress president doesn’t say a word in the four-page letter which would suggest the realisation or admission of any mistake on his part.

He blames his partymen, the RSS, the prime minister, the BJP’s financial resources and different institutions, but there is not a word about where he went wrong.

He might be facing criticism for making the alleged Rafale scam the party’s central plank, which backfired, but Gandhi remains unrepentant: “The Prime Minister’s win doesn’t negate the breadth of corruption allegations against him.”

Option open to return as Congress president

Party leaders who wanted Gandhi to withdraw his resignation should read between the lines. He says he will continue to fight for the ideals of the Congress with all his strength. He also hints at his intention to remain actively involved in party affairs.

“I am available to the party whenever they require my services, input or advice,” Gandhi says in the letter, in what may come as a big solace to Nehru-Gandhi family loyalists who would like him to return to helm the party just ahead of 2024 Lok Sabha elections.


Also read: Populism isn’t the end of liberalism. It’s now push-backism & Rahul Gandhi just faced it


 

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11 COMMENTS

  1. Gone are days of Kings and kinships – we have already had too much of the family having the birth right to rule India. Otherwise, is there any doubt as of now that he is not the material worth being in politics, let alone leading a party, in our country.
    When Congress would start going in merit mode? Why Congress candidate for PM would be only from the Great family and not from any grass root politician of the party? Why leaders like Jagjivan Ram and Pranav Mukherjee could not became PM? What remains the difference among Sonia’s son, Mulayam’s son or Lalu’s son, or Karunanidhi’s son or Devegowda’s son and sons of many others. Make Rahul PM and these leaders CMs of different states and enjoy the Democracy! Let 10 family rule the country! Why so called liberals do not ponder over this concept of family Raj?
    Even his open letter smells of his huge complexes …. what did he precisely mean when he said he was fighting the State – was the election Rahul vs India? And what does he mean when he says the future elections would be rituals? Has he lost his faith in India’s democracy …. the same democracy which brought his govt in few states just recently? The democracy which gives him the guarantee to go on speaking whatever he likes! He also said people generally do not sacrifice. He perhaps does not even know the Indian ethos – where sacrifices have been more glorious than the power and there are plenty of people doing this.
    Good that he finally resigned and better that he said no member of his family would be heading the party.
    Can we think of a situation if Rahul announce his retirement from politics and also asserts no member of his family would join it too! What will happen to Congress?
    Hypocrates feel Gandhi family is the only uniting factor of the Congress or else it will disintegrate. Really? What is the basis of this theory?
    In fact, the basis will perhaps be found in Gandhi’s weakness about Nehru. Gandhi never did hide his preference of Nehru over others and other contemporary leaders always accepted it reluctantly due to their love and respect to Gandhi. Even a leader like Subhash Chandra Bose became victim of this weakness of Gandhi. And after Nehru took over the party and govt, he too made it known that Indira would be the successor and a vicious grip over the party and govt continued and the Congressmen grew and grew seeing, admitting, admiring and committing themselves to the conviction of servicing the nation through the Great family. So much so that the Congress accepted, rather encouraged, Sanjay Gandhi to rule India without any ligitimacy whatsoever. And it has now become their habit and way of life now. They feel that the party is a Pvt Ltd company of the family. But now if the Congress has to survive, it has to be free from all the shadows of the family. Or else the Congress will crumble for sure. The true leaders of Congress have to come together and plan strategy beyond and without the family. Especially the younger leaders of the party must ponder over and come out of a plan breaking the status quo.
    The Party is having great legacies and it has to stand up before BJP to become a true centre to left alternative. This is need of the hour for India than for the party.
    The basic point of any institution remains that no individual can be bigger than the institution and the institution would run and grow even without that individual.
    We always have a tendency to fear from change …. we never expect a change may be for better. But we must acknowledge the fact that the party has missed too many growth paths due to its being loyal to one family … It has cut the growth of many leaders and inter alia deprived the country of greater leaderships in more than fifty years of it’s rule.
    The time has come when either Congress wakes up to the alarm, stands up on its own feet, explore its own avenues or History will sideline it and will fill the gap in its own!

  2. Mr.D.K.Singh has correctly summarised the FOUR page letter. “Gandhi{read I} can do no wrong and I am available to take over any time.

  3. After the 2014 debacle I had written an article “Why Rahul Should Quit”. I had then recommended that he leave the country for two years and get married, and thereafter reconsider if he should rejoin politics. I can do no better than to reiterate that.
    I also agree with the writer that Rahul has tried to project himself as the martyr rather than acknowledging that he was the root cause of the party’s electoral defeat.

  4. Absolutely right. All this is in accordance with a carefully crafted SCRIPT. The USUAL Congress ‘First Family’s charade of Sacrifice’. In real terms, they are even better off now, with the burden of responsibility without power on whoever is APPOINTED by them as President, and the REMOTE, firmly in the hands of Rahul, as it was in the 10 years of the Sonia/ Manmohan rule..

  5. It’s all nautanki- just to ward off the criticism for his utter failure in devising a strategy for the parliamentary elections. Once the dust settles down- he will again become the party President. And that day is isn’t far. It will be after Congress looses coming state elections. Meanwhile back seat driving- just like in MMS era of premiership.

  6. Surprise was people in media knows the drawbacks fully, but were hiding behind the scenes to tell the truth during election, still expecting Rahul to get more seats. The day of results, they were just praying to increase the tally from 44 to 80 plus to say there is a 100% increase. Fact was that no one was expecting Congress to cross 100. That was the state of affairs. Elections cannot be won by media propaganda.

  7. 1. It is absolutely clear that the Congress Working Committee (CWC) is reluctant to accept Rahul Gandhi’s resignation though he is pressing for its acceptance. 2. Citizen-voters on the contrary think that this is a golden opportunity to CWC to prove that the Congress party does to give importance to Gandhi dynasty.3. Just as Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra blamed Congress party workers for poor performance of the party in Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi is blaming the entire world for the Congress party’s poor performance in 2019 Lok Sabha (LS) election. This is nothing but sheer escapism and not one citizen-voter will buy Rahul Gandhi’s poor defence of his failures in LS election.4. Fact is that there are now fewer and fewer takers for Congress party with its so-called secular agenda and vague economic agenda. 5. I believe that the Congress party has a future as a centrist (to be precise, left of the centre) political party and the citizen-voters too wish that the Congress should reorganize to become such a centrist party. More importantly, it should reconsider its secular agenda which depends too much on minority voters for survival- this I suppose is an important lesson of 2019 LS election results. 5. Would today’s Congress leadership be able to make a break from the past and grow? Let us hope that senior Congress leaders do some a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis of the organization and take remedial steps to move out their party from the current pathetic situation.

  8. Good riddance. Hope this incompetent middle-aged man just vanishes to some remote island with all his riches., and along with Mulayam’s and Lalu’s sons – whatever their names are – for company.

  9. There will be a lot of speculation and informed analysis in the days ahead on what this move means, for Mr Gandhi as well as the Congress party. At the moment, it seems like a decent, responsible thing to do. British politicians do this after each general election. For the Gandhi family, this would be a milestone. However, a lot depends on who the successor is. A light weight politician like Mr Sushil Kumar Shinde, who has lost his own seat in Solapur in 2014 and 2019, was promoted as Home Minister the day he, as Power Minister, plunged northern India into twelve hours of darkness, would be seen as a family retainer, and not a particularly good one at that. If the family is still in the game, then let it be Mr Rahul Gandhi. He has dug the hole, now he should try to fill it up.

  10. We know that aptitude tests if taken several times produce more or less the same results. Rahul Gandhi has been tested numerous times for his aptitude for politics and every time he has scored below average. Employers would hesitate to take such candidate for leading roles. If such candidate inherit politics, he shouldn’t be expected to perform and do miracles. Which ever enterprise such candidate would lead is bound to become sick and lie. Congress as a Nehru Indira Dynasty enterprise has outlived its glory. For BJP haters it’s naturally very painful to see Congress dying in front of them and they can’t do anything to stop it from dying.

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