An improved version of Rahul Gandhi remains a dream

Habitual inadvertentism. n. A condition in which much of what you do or say ends up landing you on the wrong side of the barb. The coinage owes its origins to the speech and actions of Congress leader, Rahul Gandhi, who can best help himself by not helping himself.

After hiring a competent team and with the help from Jyotiraditya Scindia & Co., the Gandhi scion seemed to have segued into a makeover: Sensible speech, half-decent reasoning, and smart, divisive politics. Much removed from the man who copied a condolence message for the Nepal earthquake victims from his mobile phone word for word in 2015. The build-up of the new, improved doppelgänger was backed by discreet promotional videos by ‘sympathetic’ media websites and gushing articles by dispassionate journalists.

Just when version 2.0 was showing apparent signs of staying, the older face popped up and has been making up for the lost time. Thus, Rahul sprung upon us the discovery that Coca-Cola was invented by a ‘shikanji’ seller. In case anybody missed that mention, he barrelled ahead, inventing the origins of multinational chains like McDonald’s as well. “Dhaba chalata tha,” he insisted. The larger context, of course, was that Indians cannot move up the value chain from humble origins. Except that this lament was coming from a dynast, a man who was part of a family that has ruled India for the larger part of its life, and most importantly, it came at a time when a tea-seller is the prime minister of the country. They say the speechwriter was flogged. Or was it the other way round?

Unlike his mother, who resolutely reads out her speeches, Rahul cannot always stick to the script. He gives in to the temptation to look up at his listeners and gets waylaid. Sometimes, he follows the letter but not the spirit. Consider the instance when he made the Kailash Mansarovar remark. His speech writers must have positively preened on thinking up this masterstroke. The plan was simple: Speak of his Delhi-Hubbali plane scare and then say he desires to pay his respects to Kailash Mansarovar so that it sounds like a sweet thanksgiving gesture and pulls votes in at the same time.

Rahul followed the script but successfully slew the idea. The plane scare was mentioned — and how he thought ‘gaddi gayi’ (whatever that means). Then, he spoke of his plans to undertake a pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar after the Karnataka election. The two sentences stood there, alone and orphaned, comfortably separate. The emotional sub-text to the proposed trip — “I thought I should thank the gods;” “I prayed and am grateful,” or even “I am a Shiva devotee”, — was missing. No causal relationship between the two statements was established.

In his mind, all Hindu votes fell into his kitty that day, never mind that none of the voters would have made the connection to the plane incident. And it is a different matter that there has been no word on the said expedition thereafter.

Last week, Rahul held a record two-minute press conference in Mumbai. Even as Congressmen were applauding his media-friendliness, the interaction ended as soon as it had begun. Mumbai Congress president Sanjay Nirupam, who had made party history in 2015 by letting derogatory references to Sonia Gandhi’s family sneak into the Congress mouthpiece, took the hit once again. He explained post-facto to the hundreds of invited mediapersons that the press conference was actually not meant to happen. The question hanging in the air was: was the presser tamped down out of fear of upending another bushwhacked ‘shikanji’ seller somewhere in the world.

Many snigger that till Rahul is at the helm of the Opposition, the BJP need not worry. What they do not understand is that he ticks all the boxes for the English-speaking Indians, who stake themselves as the country’s intelligentsia. To them, Rahul is the anti-Modi. He is a Nehru-Gandhi and he speaks English like them. These are his biggest positives. The first speech Rahul made after taking over as Congress president in December last year was in English. He read out from a prepared text word for word. He offers a snowflake relatability that is sorely missing in the hard-nosed, son-of-the-soil Modi.

After all, his lack of knowledge about NCC, as he confessed in his speech at a school, or about the fact that a monetary offering for an ‘aarti’ is not an under-the-table bribe to the gods but it goes right next to the lamp on the ‘aarti’ plate are piffling matters for those suffering from confirmation bias. So long as he gets the accent, right.

The author is a senior journalist and a communications consultant. Views expressed are personal.