Rahul goes after Modinomics in Gujarat, likens him to Hitler

A Rahul Gandhi speech, some would say, isn’t quite a ‘Rahul Gandhi speech’ without the following: a sentence left midway, an Animal Planet-inspired analogy that no one except him understands, sentences separated by the word ’empowerment’, a blinking break between two words, a RTI-MNREGA-‘bhojan’ for the ‘gareeb’  refrain and finally such a virulent attack on ‘system’ that you’d imagine the word wants to disappear from the English dictionary by now. So when Gandhi turned up in Balasinore in Kheda district, Gujarat as a part of his poll campaign, you could almost see the Modi fan-boys type out their Pappu jokes on their phones and wait to hit enter as Rahul begins his speech. Then something strange happened. Blame it on a chastised speechwriter, good homework or the mere anxiety of delivering an anti-Modi speech in Gujarat, Rahul launched on a speech against Gujarat CM Narendra Modi that never entered into ‘Pappu’ territory, not even once. As he kicked his speech off, he first took up the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel issue, who has literally been turned into a silent mascot of sorts for Narendra Modi in Gujarat. The BJP has carefully planned a Statue of Unity campaign parallel to the one around Modi, so as to never let the Gujarat CM off people’s sight and hearing, yet make sure that’s there’s no ‘Modi Sarkar’ over-kill. So while there are the usual encomiums about Modi blasting off the radio, staring back at you from billboards, popping up while browsing websites, surfacing during ad-breaks in your favourite TV show and talking to you from multiplex screens, the BJP has spent several hundred scores to make sure the Statue of Unity endeavour is also advertised extensively in all the said platforms. [caption id=“attachment_1429159” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi. Agencies.[/caption] Hitting out at the Sardar Patel initiative, therefore, amounts to hitting out at the symbol of BJP’s poll campaign this year. While Gandhi didn’t question either the necessity or the source of funding of the same, he questioned the motive behind suddenly propping Sardar Patel up in BJP’s narrative before the polls. He also questioned if Modi, a former RSS sevak, had the moral right to claim that he wants to make Sardar Patel’s vision come true. He said it didn’t require a Masters or Ph D to know that Patel had been opposed to the BJP’s ideology and said that the BJP had originally even opposed naming the Ahmedabad airport after the freedom fighter. “Sardar Patel had said that RSS philosophy is toxic for the country…Before building the statue they didn’t see what he had said about us and our organisation,” he said. By questioning if Modi at all deserves to call Sardar Patel as his moral icon, Rahul tried exploiting the same overzealous nature of India’s relationship with its cultural icons that Modi too has, by pledging his admiration for Patel. In a way, Rahul suggested that Modi is using Sardar Patel as a means to attain an end, that of becoming the country’s PM. A lot of Narendra Modi’s charisma stems from his unbridled machismo, his ability to taunt people ruthlessly, to demolish reputations by trifling their achievements in a way that’s entertaining for the audience. In the same vein he had called Manmohan Singh a ’nightwatchman’. And in the same assertive tone, he demanded he be made the ‘chowkidaar’ (guard/gate-keeper) of the country so as to make sure there’s no corruption in the country. Rahul, in his Gujarat speech questioned the role he promises to play for the country and said that the country doesn’t need a chowkidaar or guard. “Make me the chowkidaar and corruption will go, this man claims. The country has seen many chowkidaars. Even the British were chowkidaars and look what we did to them. We threw them out of the country,” Rahul said. He also exhorted his voters to be be vigilant about their own rights and what they are being fed as truth - that will empower them. One can say, much like Kejriwal’s poll plank of de-centralisation of power, this exhortation was sharply in contrast to Modi’s ‘protector of all’ persona. By being aware, Rahul suggested, the voter will easily immunise himself from being preyed on by corruption. For a electorate bristling with impatience and self-righteousness it’s an appeal that works greatly as compared to one where they have to elect an all-powerful protector. And again, much like Arvind Kejriwal in Gujarat, Rahul questioned Modi’s claims of development in the land he bases all his claims on. “Where is the development? Children are dying from malnutrition. And the government is claiming that Gujarat is shining. Gujarat is shining, yes, but only for a few industrialists. Who have been given land by snatching them from poor farmers. Their houses are shining more than gold, yes, in that way, Gujarat is shining,” he declared amid a wave of applause. It is difficult to not notice, that Rahul’s strongly worded, decisive attack on Narendra Modi took on the colour and harped on the point similar to the ones Arvind Kejriwal did in Gujarat recently. Kejriwal too had declared that he will visit Gujarat to verify Modi’s claims and instead of attacking Modi’s model of development from afar, he landed right in the heart of the CM’s political bastion and claimed to reveal the ’truth’. Kejriwal re-tweeted pictures of run-down homes in villages in Gujarat, of general poverty and asked aloud, “Where is the development?” Apart from being audacious, the move comes with another political benefit. By involving the subject of his criticism directly, Kejriwal managed to nullify accusations of ignorance and bad research that usually follows such a move. His audience would be compelled to think that there would be some grain of truth in what Kejriwal is saying if he dares to say so from Gujarat itself. Gandhi seemed to be following the model,with some success. In fact, without naming him, Gandhi also likened Modi to Hilter. However, not in the context of violence. He pointed at Hitler’s dictatorial personality to say that with Modi, the country will only be stifling democracy. “There are two types of leaders. One who meets with people, visits their homes like Gandhiji and understands them…Such a leader is humble and has no arrogance, like Gandhiji,” Rahul said.  And to contrast, he presented the second type of leader. “There is another type of leader: Hitler. Hitler believed there was no need to learn from the people. Whatever will happen in Germany will be done by Hitler and the people have nothing to do with it,” he said. He possibly tried to offer an alternative model of leadership in Gujarat as opposed to the one the state has grown used to. In a contest which is turning into one that is as much about personalities as it is about flagrant, at times vituperative audacity, Rahul and Kejriwal’s moves were ones that were right up Modi’s ally.