It would be silly of anyone to believe that Rahul Gandhi's Mount Vesuvius-like eruption of September 27 has anything to do with the Congress's commitment to cleanse the political system of corrupt and convicted lawmakers. Had that been the case, the following should have happened:
The party would have declared its happiness over lalu Prasad's conviction and jail term and announced an end to its ties with the Rashtriya Janata Dal which lalu leads. But it continues to be coy on the matter and has no issues with the hypocrisy of running with the hare and hunting with the hound.
The Congress would have demanded that heads should roll of those Ministers who crafted the ordinance to protect convicted politicians and allegedly persuaded a reportedly reluctant Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to endorse it. Prominent among them is Union Minister for law and Justice Kapil Sibal, who is said to be the mastermind behind the ordinance. Yet, there is no action. It appears that Rahul Gandhi's sole motive was to humiliate the Prime Minister and allow those who led the latter to the ignominy go free.
The party would have cracked the whip on all those Government and Congress spokespersons and leaders who had vociferously defended the ordinance, with one of the Union Ministers, Ajay Maken, calling the decision “perfect”. What was perfect until a few moments ago cannot have become nonsense and fit to be torn up and thrown away the next minute. It was some poetic justice that Maken was sitting and squirming by the vice president's side at the Press Club of India in Delhi when the latter gate-crashed into a pre-arranged Press conference which was to be addressed by the Minister, and spewed molten ash on the ordinance. Maken had the stricken look of a respectable man caught in a less than respectable act.
Rahul Gandhi would have questioned the wisdom of members of the Congress's core committee, which had green-flagged not only the ill-fated ordinance but also a disastrous Bill with similar provisions which would have eventually replaced the ordinance. But doing that would have opened a can of worms and compelled the vice president to do soul-searching — an exercise he does not want to indulge in for now.
The Congress would have sought the resignation of the Prime Minister for having brought in a piece of ‘complete nonsense', so complete that it deserved to be ‘torn up and thrown away'. But soon after Rahul Gandhi's public outburst, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said the party had the greatest regard for Manmohan Singh and that it stood by the Prime Minister. It had the greatest regard, because he committed nonsenseIJ And it stood by the Prime Minister, because he had sent to the President for approval a piece of paper which, in the vice president's ‘personal opinion' that became the party's diktat, was absolute trashIJ
The party would have taken to task the tallest leaders of the Congress who either openly supported the ordinance or remained tactically silent when it and the Bill to negate the July 10 verdict of the Supreme Court had come up before the Cabinet and received approval. But Rahul Gandhi could not be bothered. He wanted to create a flutter and he did that with his symbolic pithiness. Substance can wait.
The Congress wants the country to believe that the end is perfect. The Cabinet had approved the ordinance in its collective wisdom, and the Cabinet has withdrawn it in its collective greater wisdom. The Government has heeded the voice of the people who were outraged by its shenanigans. So, why should anyone complainIJ Is there a law that says an error cannot be set right without losing faceIJ Through such spins, the Congress is turning what should have been an occasion of shame, into one of celebration.
But then, why shouldn't it, when the man who has lost the most, remains content despite being publicly humiliated by an upstart whose only claim to fame is that he belongs to the Nehru-Gandhi dynastyIJ The Prime Minister may be fine with the situation; Rahul acolytes may be celebrating the incident; Manmohan Singh's Ministers may be privately chuckling over the discomfort to their boss. But the people of the country are not amused one bit. They want to know: Is this how the Prime Minister of the country — never mind the person in the post — should be treatedIJ
As it turns out, it is just the question that Manmohan Singh should have forcefully asked Rahul Gandhi, and demanded from him an unambiguous apology. The people are in no mood to fight the Prime Minister's battle, simply because the head of the Government of the world's largest democracy has no courage to confront the Congress scion. They could perhaps rally behind him if he were to assume charge. People like leaders with spine; they will not sympathise with the cowardly.
But Manmohan Singh was swept off his feet when Rahul Gandhi called on him recently. What precisely happened behind closed doors, no one really knows. We do know that the Singh-led regime shamefacedly decided to withdraw the ordinance and the Bill, and that Rahul Gandhi did not offer a hint of an apology. On the contrary, he later said that the “sentiment” he expressed at the Press Club event was appropriate. No regret for the choice of words, though he did add that the Congress president had told him he had used rather strong words to express the sentiment. But that is his mother's opinion; Rahul Gandhi has no regret.
Manmohan Singh should be the one to regret having become servile to the dynasty and compromising not just his prestige but also that of the post of the country's Prime Minister — once occupied by giants such as Jawaharlal Nehru, lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Very loyal Congress leaders like VP Singh rebelled when they were pushed to the wall. Non-Congress stalwarts like Chandrashekhar quit kicking and screaming when the Congress pulled the rug from under their feet. Even those like IK Gujral, who quietly vacated the chair after the Congress withdrew support, did so with their head held high.
In the twilight of his prime ministership, Singh had the opportunity to reclaim some respect. If he did not in the case at hand, it is as much to do with his pusillanimity as it is to do with the fact that he and his Government were completely in the wrong. But that does not justify grovelling. Monarchy and nobility from Asia and Europe may have become history, but the subject-mentality is still around, at least in today’s Congress.