Save politics from politicians

Dwarika Prasad Sharma
These are mere politicians! This is the spontaneous reaction of yours truly when exasperated at the increasingly childish polemics of politicians.
The chhappan chhuri (56-daggers) Rahul Gandhi, charged with the recent state polls showing, has sharpened his attack on the chhappan-inch-chhaati (56-inch-chest) Narendra Modi. The Congress chief hit a new low when, at a kisan rally in Jaipur, he remarked: “The watchman (chowkidar) with a 56-inch chest ran away and told a woman, Sitharaman ji, defend me. For two-and-half hours, the woman (mahila) could not defend him. I had asked a straight question—yes or no— but she could not answer it.”
The National Commission for Women has issued him a notice to explain his remarks, but his response would probably be more obtuse. NCW president Rekha Sharma said: “What is Rahul Gandhi trying to imply with his misogynistic statement? Does he think women are weak? The irony— calling the accomplished defence minister of the largest democracy a weak person.”
The wide criticism of his remarks, if anything, would act as oxygen to Rahul. Could he have found a better forum than a kisan rally to agitate his frustration at being challenged over his Rafale deal “facts”? For all one knows, he would not miss out on Rafale even when squatting at a dalit’s shanty, provided that the paparazzi and the byte-hunters are there to cover him from the front and on the sidelines.
Modi, without naming Rahul, said later at a rally in Agra that it was an insult to women of the country, and that the able defence minister had floored the opposition in the Lok Sabha by coming up with “fact after fact” on Rafale.
Not to be outdone, Rahul again climbed down to the footpath and tweeted: “With all due respect to Modi ji, in our culture, respect for women begins at home. Stop shaking. Be a man and answer my question: Did the Air Force and defence ministry object when you bypassed the original Rafale deal? Yes or no?”
The bitterness in the words of the accidental Congress chief is a give-away. Pappu still has not passed! A good training for him would be to mellow himself with a touch of humour. But not of the variety when he winked in the Lok Sabha like an urchin after being near-rebuffed by Modi to whom he lunged forward to jokingly bind in a bearhug. The legendary Prime Minister of Britain, Benjamin Disraeli, mellowed his in-your-face remarks by lacing them with subtle, mystifying and humorous words. Sample his often-quoted one-liner: “Lies, damned lies and statistics.”
In December last year, the Supreme Court gave a clean chit to the decision-making process followed by the Government for the Rafale deal and ruled that it found no evidence of wrong-doing. Refusing to go into pricing details, it dismissed a batch of petitions seeking an investigation into the deal.
But the Congress, spearheaded by its chief, has spun into a never-say-die tangential path. The party hopes to farm Rafale for the general election, and a kisan rally is as good as the floor of Parliament, or for that matter, while breaking bajra roti with a dalit family.
Rahul also has strong personal reasons to keep furiously stirring the Rafale pot, as Boforsgate had tarnished the image of his Prime Minister father Rajiv Gandhi and led to the downfall of the Congress Government in the 1989 election. Can the Congress pull off a Bofors with Rafale? Amid the Bofors heat, then defence minister V.P.Singh resigned, while the present defence minister is not only holding the field gamely, but derisively giving it back measure for measure. Modi is an experienced and annealed political campaigner, unlike the accidental Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and his heir Rahul. Bofors was an open and shut case, which Rafale is not, contrary to the claims of Rahul.
Before I move on to the next sample of boorish public remarks by a politician, this time nearer home, a quote from Will Rogers, American humorist and social commentator, comes to mind. He said: “Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.”
Mehbooba Mufti, who had appeared stoic when her coalition partner BJP pulled the rug from under her chief ministerial chair, has increasingly been making inept and shrieking remarks against all political opponents, her colleagues who are deserting her and, of course, the Centre headed by Modi.
Her outstanding gem is calling the deserters “garbage” that she is well rid of. She had desperately attempted to keep them in the fold by reconstituting party committees, but she largely failed. Sensitive thinkers like Haseeb Drabu did not bite the bait, and other liberal voices, like that of Muzaffar Hussain Beigh, decided to soldier on, but are publically counselling discretion.
Mehbooba is back to here roodali ways, visiting the homes of eliminated as well as active terrorists. She is trying to rework her lost baaji (elder sister) image into a new self-assumed moji (mother) persona. To atone for what she is now calling her “motherly” admonishments of stone-happy boys during the 2016 rioting, she is apologising to them. During the unrest, she had facetiously remarked that, when the boys bore down on police stations and army camps, they could not claim innocence and say they were out to buy toffees or milk. NC’s Omar Abdullah reminded her that she had also said that soldiers had guns, and they were for using.
The forays of baaji with boys into remote areas to garner votes before the last assembly election are seen to have spawned squads of stone-throwers. Now in her attempts to regain her lost votes a moji is out to repeat the script.
She has been hitting back at the NC by reminding Omar that she did not “sign on the dotted line” at the time of the hanging of Afzal Guru. Also that the 1987 rigging of the Assembly election, when Farooq Abdullah was Chief Minister, had created rebels like Salahuddin and Malik. And to think that the two parties, placed fiercely at opposite poles, were emitting improbable magnetic vibes to couple together to grab power! But then politics makes strange bedfellows. The Congress, NC’s partner in the 1987 manipulation, was also in to claim a slice of the pie in the sky.
The latest kid on the block is Shah Feisal, who has resigned from his IAS job because of, what he calls, his pain at the “unabated killings” in Kashmir, and a “lack of sincere reach out from the Union government”. He was the first from the State to top the IAS, and he became an icon for the Government and the security forces to cite as a trail-blazer for Kashmiri youth. Feisal, whose teacher father was gunned down by terrorists for refusing them shelter, himself used to exhort the youth to shun the path of violence and productively engage their energy. He quit when he had just refurbished his qualifications profile by doing a course abroad.
One hopes that he would act as a bridge for the perceived outreach gap which is a reason given by him for quitting. At the time of qualifying IAS, he had said that he would act as a constructive communication channel between the people and the Government. At a news conference, he has said that he has no intention of joining any political party yet, but he would contest an election, in order to remain within the system and work to change it. He has rejected feelers from both NC’s Omar and Hurriyat’s Umar. To the Hurriyat, he has said that it does not offer a platform for electoral politics.
Faesal says that he wants to “disrupt politics”. Yes, constructive disruption of politics is very much the need of the hour. My suggestion to him: work to rid politics of politicians, and politicians of politics.
(The writer is a Senior Journalist)
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