If the United States indeed was to pay heed to advice of Rahul Gandhi, and intervene in India, the history of future could venture a comparison between the Congress leader and the likes of Jai Chands, Mir Jafars and Shuja ud Daulahs.
In an online conversation with Nicholas Burns, once under-secretary of state for political affairs and now a professor at Harvard Kennedy School on Friday, Rahul Gandhi literally asked for interjection from the United States in India’s affairs. “I don’t hear anything from the US establishment about what is happening in India. If you are saying partnership in democracy is, I mean, what’s your view on what is happening here,” said the Gandhi scion with full theatrics.
Now of course Gandhi didn’t ask for military intervention in India’s internal affairs but since he asked for interjection, in modern diplomatic parlance, it’s pressuring-censoring-sanctioning method which the US employs so successfully around the globe against governments which don’t toe the Washington line.
What’s the need for this SOS from Rahul Gandhi? The Congress leader himself supplied the reason in the conversation: The Wayanad MP opined that India’s institutional framework had a “wholesome capture” by the ruling dispensation: That to fight elections, there needs be protection by the judicial system, reasonably free media, amongst other things but all this is not there in India.
Now please pay heed readers: Rahul Gandhi, in not so many words, has shown India to be a sham democracy: Without free media, free judiciary and even free elections as he cited the example of EVMs being carried in a BJP candidate’s car in Assam.
If India’s media wasn’t free, this EVM-story wouldn’t have made front page of all newspapers today. If India’s judiciary wasn’t free, it wouldn’t have stayed all night to grant Congress a government in Karnataka or turned the verdict in favour of late Ahmed Patel in Rajya Sabha polls. If Rahul Gandhi thinks there are no fair elections in India, one has never heard a word from him on panchayat elections in West Bengal. Besides, it’s a bit rich coming from a man whose party fights shy of holding internal elections. If he feels India is now being driven on majoritarian communal lines, and that “secular” space has shrunk, his party joining hands with sectarian outfits in Bengal and Assam (ISF and AIUDF) isn’t quite an advertisement in favour of secularism.
Since Rahul Gandhi doesn’t quite understand present India, he could be unaware of India’s past too. One is not quite sure if he has heard of Jai Chand of Kannauj who joined Mohammad Ghouri against Prithviraj Chauhan and India’s history was never the same; of Mir Jafar who clasped Robert Clive’s hands against Nawab of Bengal and gave British a toehold on which they built an empire of nearly two centuries; or of Shuja-ud-Dawla whose finances helped Afghan ruler Ahmed Shah Abdali in prevailing over Marathas in third battle of Panipat (1761).
These three seismic episodes devastated India: One heralded the Islamic rule, another signalled the advent of the British empire and the third one broke the back of Maratha empire, the last chapter of pride and power for Hindus in their own land.
This is the man who was visiting an envoy of a neighbouring giant when Doklam was in news. Apart from its ex prime minister meeting Pakistan’s High Commissioner during Gujarat elections which raised eyebrows given the strained relations between the two neighbours.
Now Rahul Gandhi is asking Americans the reason of their silence on India. An India which lost its lands in the Partition, lost part of Kashmir to Pakistan and its present NorthEast where infiltrators are working overtime to see if Bengal or Assam could go up in smoke. Who controlled India’s destiny when these mishaps happened? Who is looking to add another chapter to this blood-soaked tragedy?
