Rahul Gandhi is clearly unaware of the age-old guru-shishya tradition of the country, just as he is out of his depth on many other realities. If he had some understanding, he would have known that pupils do not insult their erudite teacher — most certainly not in the open.
The Congress vice president said on Thursday that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is one of his political gurus — the other being his mother and party president Sonia Gandhi. But only a fortnight ago he had trashed his teacher at a Press conference, calling an ordinance that the Prime Minister had cleared and sent to the President for approval, “nonsense” and deserving to be “torn up and thrown away”. Perhaps the Prime Minister was not his guru then!
The Congress scion need not have taken such trouble to placate Manmohan Singh. The Prime Minister does not take offence easily. He has digested many insults since assuming power in 2004, but never wavered from his commitment to cling on to the chair. He has braved the September 27 humiliation and absorbed thinly disguised barbs in his stride. Even if Rahul Gandhi had not met him and ‘clarified' his statement on the ordinance, the Prime Minister would have remained steadfast in continuing in his position. Even if Sonia Gandhi had not expressed complete faith in him a few days after the Rahul snub, Manmohan Singh would not have taken precipitate action. Whatever nice things the Congress vice president may now say, and repeat for effect, the Prime Minister's legacy will not change. He will remain the Guru of Nonsense.
But let's keep Manmohan Singh aside; he has made himself irrelevant. The important thing is that we now know for sure where Rahul Gandhi stands: Confused and riding two horses at the same time. One of the principal reasons why governance has gone downhill is that there has been consistent friction between the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi on many issues critical to policy-making. It may not have played out in the open as a bitter feud — unlike her son, the Congress chief has taken care to maintain a public appearance of respect for Manmohan Singh — but insiders are in no doubt that the Prime Minister has had to gulp down many ‘socialist' decisions that the party president imposed on the Government. While Manmohan Singh prefers to be driven by reformists of the economy, Sonia Gandhi is goaded by her jholawallah advisers to abort the former's agenda in the name of the aam aadmi. left to himself, Manmohan Singh would have perhaps avoided the fund-guzzling food security legislation at this point in time, and curtailed the poorly implemented Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme. But he is not his own man.
Thus, when Rahul Gandhi says that both the Prime Minister and the Congress president are his gurus, he is actually stating that he does not have a clear agenda of governance. With clamour in the Congress rank and file and among the fawning senior leadership of the party to project him as the prime ministerial candidate, the people have to take a call on whether they want a dangerous mix of Singh-Sonia misgovernance that has taken our economy, foreign policy and internal security to new levels of low.
In any case, what has Rahul Gandhi learned — and is learning — from the two teachersIJ The first lesson is to do with the fine art of hypocrisy. The Prime Minister often says with injured innocence that he is an upright man. But he has had no problem in looking the other way as his Ministers engaged in improper and even allegedly corrupt deals. If not for the courts and pressure from a jittery party, he would not have taken action against A Raja (2G Spectrum scam), Pawan Kumar Bansal (railway recruitment scandal) and Ashwani Kumar (coal block allocation irregularities). When there is no such extraneous pressure, he does not act — as in the case of Union Minister for Coal Sriprakash Jaiswal (who remains in the Cabinet despite the coal scam) and Suresh Kalmadi (who is still an honourable MP despite the Commonwealth Games and the Indian Olympic Association disgrace).
Sonia Gandhi, who loses no opportunity to demonstrate that the party under her leadership has zero tolerance for corruption, ignores the persecution of civil servants who have dared to question real estate deals that involve her son-in-law Robert Vadra. She hasn't even called for an impartial probe into the matter to set speculation to rest once and for all. She wants to root our criminals from politics, and yet is comfortable with taking the support of convicted leaders like lalu Prasad. Breaking the bond with a leader, who has been sentenced to five years in prison on charges of corruption, is not even on the Congress president’s radar.
Rahul Gandhi has made a fine beginning in hypocrisy. One moment he grounds to dust the reputation (or whatever has remained of it) of the Prime Minister, and the other moment he praises him to the sky. He gets extremely upset at an ordinance that offers protection to convicted lawmakers, but does not back a strong lokpal Bill which civil society activists led by Anna Hazare campaigned for and which has the support of an overwhelming majority of the people. He is against corruption but not in favour of a strong anti-corruption law like the Jan lokpal Bill.
The Congress vice president is also quickly acquiring his mentors' skills in obfuscating issues and pointing fingers at the Opposition for the wrongs they themselves have done. Facts can be sacrificed in the process. Thus, Rahul Gandhi has blamed opposition parties (read the Bharatiya Janata Party) for trying to derail the land acquisition Bill. The obfuscation is that he does not inform his listeners about the failure of the Congress and its allied to come to an agreement that led to a delay in getting the legislation. The finger-pointing is when he holds the BJP responsible. The fact being sacrificed is that the BJP had whole-heartedly helped the Government pass the Bill after the party's suggestions were incorporated. The fact also is that Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh had on record applauded the BJP for its cooperation in getting the Bill approved.
There are also some lessons that Rahul Gandhi, given his position, need not learn from the Prime Minister. One of them is: ‘How to be a winning sycophant'. There are many in the Congress who too don't need the wisdom, because they have already acquired it through years of dedicated practice. leaders change, but the art of sycophancy is immortal.