Rahul Gandhi is currently in London for the ‘Ideas for India’ conference organised by non-profit think-tank Bridge India
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. ANI
New Delhi: Party in tatters, will travel. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s latest absence from India comes at the end of a scorched earth trail, featuring the great escape of Gujarat firebrand Hardik Patel, the great switcheroo of former Punjab state chief Sunil Jakhar, and the Go-To-Jail ignominy of the man who would be CM Navjot Singh Sidhu.
Rahul Gandhi is currently in London for the ‘Ideas for India’ conference. The event has been organised by non-profit think-tank Bridge India, and has a long list of speakers from India, political and non-political. On Monday, Rahul will address and interact with Cambridge University students at an event named India at 75. The Congress leader also plans to interact with members of the Indian diaspora.
In a sense the Udaipur chintan continues, having widened in its Cambridge avatar to include Opposition parties. The other speakers at this conference are Tejashwi Yadav and Manoj Jha from RJD, Mahua Moitra from TMC, GOP’s own Salman Khurshid, Telangana minister KT Rama Rao, CPI’s Sitaram Yechury, and former Congress advisor Sam Pitroda.
Several of the other speakers at the ‘Ideas for India’ conference have been part of the Congress and Left ecosystems for long. Bridge India’s own list of advisors and trustees have several known BJP-baiters.
This is, predictably, a sitter for the BJP. The party’s In-charge of National Information and Technology Department, Amit Malviya, has already cut loose with a salvo, asking if Gandhi was making an “excuse to holiday abroad”.
“There are a billion Ideas for India and they manifest themselves in myriad ways in our public life. Our democratic process is a powerful manifestation of it. People of India have voted overwhelmingly in favour of Prime Minister Modi, not once but twice now. Those who are exploring ‘Ideas for India’ on foreign soil are insulting the wisdom of the masses… This just looks like another excuse to holiday abroad than to indulge in any meaningful confabulation,” Malviya told Firstpost.
After the conference, Rahul Gandhi would be in conversation with Dr Shruti Kapila, Assistant Professor of History at Cambridge and Fellow of Corpus Christi College. This too seems stage-managed since Kapila’s work pegs her right against India’s ruling dispensation.
This excerpt from Kapila’s recent article for a website neatly summarises her stance: “Economic globalisation and cultural nationalism are directed at circumventing, eliding and overwhelming social distinction and inequality, as neo-nationalism becomes increasingly dependent on and identified as a doctrine of uniformity brooking neither difference nor dissent.”
This foreign trip and the interactions it will feature seem to be yet another effort by the Congress to portray Rahul Gandhi as the intellectual face of Indian politics, a leader hosted at top-rated academic institutions, especially in the West.
If history is any indication, Rahul Gandhi has time and again sabotaged his party’s strategy and has ended up fuelling jokes and memes. Gandhi family loyalists have long tried to present Rahul Gandhi as a youth icon who is modern and enlightened–an effort to cast him in the image of his father Rajiv Gandhi–and failed miserably as none of Rahul Gandhi’s ideas seem to have worked, neither with his party nor with the people of India.
The Congress, however, remains resolute. “Rahul Gandhi has constantly advised and cautioned this government over Covid, China, economy and such things as farm laws. He even cautioned the government over inflation and warned that we are going the Sri Lanka way, but they can’t even take positive criticism. For them anyone speaking against them is an anti-national. In this case, even for talking as an Indian about India is an anti-national activity. It is up to them to understand that Rahul Gandhi’s criticism is not against the country, but them which they should take positively. But once can’t expect that from this government even as they have committed blunder after blunder owing to its ego and not listening to others,” Rohan Gupta, chairman of Congress’ social media department, told Firstpost.
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