DNA Edit: Congress house in disarray - Chaturvedi’s move shows party members are in ennui

Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi has resigned from the Congress after 10 years of association with it and joined the Shiv Sena.

Earlier, she had taken to Twitter expressing her displeasure over the way her party had treated her. Chaturvedi was upset that the party reinstated certain Congress leaders, who had used indecent language towards her in Mathura, which happens to be her hometown.

She had been one of the most vociferous defenders of the party on Twitter and other media platforms, and had received threats against her family and her own life. She did not budge. However, it is this unkindest cut that came from within that hurt her. But, should she have been surprised?

The Congress culture, if it can be called one, has been such even as their leader and party president Rahul Gandhi speaks of love and decency in public discourse. In one of his most (in)famous stunts, Rahul went to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to offer a hug during parliamentary debate; even there, instead of politely requesting the PM to rise so that he could hug him, the Congress chief almost ordered him to stand. And after the forced hug was done, he even had the temerity to wink at his fellow MPs, which belied his claim to genuine intentions.

What Chaturvedi experienced first-hand has been apparent several times, and despite the party getting flak for it, there has been no change in how Congress supporters and leaders behave. Senior party leader Digvijaya Singh described a fellow Congress leader as tunch maal (loosely translated into ‘a desirable object’). He used the same words describing actress Disha Patani. He had no regrets for uttering such third-grade language. And the party has nominated him to contest Lok Sabha elections in Bhopal.

Similarly, Imran Masood, the Uttar Pradesh Congress leader who infamously said he would chop PM Modi into pieces, was named in the first list of the Congress candidates for this general election. When there was uproar over the remark in 2014, Rahul Gandhi, who likes to take higher moral ground on such issues, had said that he disapproved the language. But the man was not only allowed to contest the 2014 general elections, but he was also nominated in the 2017 assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.

Manishankar Aiyer did not learn any lesson from his chaiwalla remark against Narendra Modi in 2014 when the party paid heavily for the sheer arrogance displayed by the Congress leader. He again referred to PM Modi as neech aadmi, showing that his classist bias just doesn’t go away.

Rahul himself erred when he spoke about Rafale documents after meeting the then ailing Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar. What was meant to be a courtesy visit was turned into a political one-upmanship by the Congress president, which boomeranged badly.

If Congress is indeed serious about issues of bringing back public decency in political discourse, then the party will have to set its own house in order before pointing fingers at others.