Post poll humour: Tharoor vs Mani Shankar Aiyar is a joke

If you are stuck for comic relief in this post-election season, where almost everyone is becoming doubly serious about everything, you need look no farther than the Congress party. It is difficult to expect too many laughs out of the BJP government which, horror of horrors, seems to actually want to govern. The only pleasure you can derive out of the internal blood-letting in the Aam Aadmi Party is a form of schadenfreude. For the real stuff, you need the Congress.

I rubbed my hands in glee when a couple of disgruntled Congressmen attempted to call Rahul Gandhi a “joker” or circus clown. But the Congress party takes its Dynasty very seriously and not as a joke. So Bhanwar Lal Sharma of Rajasthan, who called Rahul “MD of the Congressi circus,” was flung out of the circus tent by the party’s bouncers. And the Kerala Congressman (TH Mustafa), who called Rahul a “joker” , was left suspended on the trapeze with the safety net gone.

But before gloom could set in on the Congress circus, we got a full-blown vaudeville act, courtesy the ever-reliable Mani Shankar Aiyar and Shashi Tharoor, who is forever getting into trouble with his party over his choice of words. In the past, he got a rap on the knuckles for making light of the party’s austerity programme and calling it “cattle class” – a reference to ministers being asked to travel economy class. This time, he got an earful for suggesting that there may be a new Narendra Modi in the works. Tharoor dubbed the new, improved Narendrabhai,  Modi 2.0.

This is where the laugh-riot began. In the Congress party, you can call anybody an improved version barring Modi. If Tharoor had called Modi Minus 2.0, he would have been lauded and elevated. But in the Sanatan Parivar (eternal Gandhi parivar), progress or improvement can only be attributed to Rahul or Sonia, not their political rivals. Not only did the party distance itself from Tharoor’s comments in The Huffington Post, but Mani “foot-in-mouth” Aiyar waded in to administer the coup de grace.

Aiyar, I believe, is a secret Modi supporter. Some months ago, when the Modi campaign appeared to be plateauing, he put new vigour into it by offering Narendra Modi the job of tea-server to the Congress party. Suddenly, Modi became the toast of every tea party and chaiwallah in the land. He started walking with a new spring. This time, just as Tharoor was trying to defang Modi by indicating that he was capable of putting campaign rhetoric behind him and act statesman-like, Aiyar was quick to drive a coach-and-four over this moderate praise. Aiyar knows that Modi is at his best when attacked, and at his weakest when he is praised.

But the joke is in the Aiyar poke and the Tharoor parry. On Friday (6 June), Aiyar advised Tharoor not to use “sycophantic” terms like Modi 2.0. The Times of India quotes Aiyar as tut-tutting thus: “This kind of chameleon-like praising just after a few days (of Modi coming to power) is uncalled for. It demonstrates great immaturity.”

Ha-ha. Aiyar is giving lessons in maturity to Tharoor.

More ha-ha. Tharoor retorted that by praising Modi he was actually setting a trap for the prime minister. “By praising him (Modi) for specific things, we help frame public expectations of his continued behaviour and raise the bar against which we will judge him in the future.”

The biggest joke is this: the Congress party’s highest ranking sycophant, Mani Aiyar, who has a AAA+ (called Triple A Plus) rating from Standard and Poors in this area, is taking potshots at a AA- (Double A Minus) party flunky like Tharoor, who does not want to be seen as a mindless Dynasty worshipper and that he has some mind of his own.

In the Congress party, Triple A sycophants have greater longevity – even if they are of no practical use in building the party, which is surely the case with Mani Aiyar - than Double A ones. In the Sanatan Parivar (ie, the Gandhi Dynasty), the only two rules to follow are: ‘Thou shalt always sing the praises of Dynasty’; and, in a variant of Moses’ commandment, ‘Thou Shalt have no gods other than the Gandhi family’.

Just as the Sangh Parivar will damn anyone who dares to say even mildly positive things about Jinnah (as LK Advani found out to his cost in 2005, when he went to Pakistan and praised Jinnah’s secularism), in India the Sanatan Parivar has erected the BJP, and Modi in particular, as the prime evil of whom no good can be spoken.

The joke is also in Tharoor’s defence, where he claimed that he was laying a trap for Modi by praising him for “specific things.” This may save him from a further downgrade on the sycophancy rating to junk status, but he was trying to be too clever by half. The truth is the Gandhi family’s retainers in the media have been doing this all along – raising the bar for Modi, no matter what he does, and laying traps for him to fall into. If he does something, it will be said that he could have done better. If he does not do something, it will be held against him.

This much is apparent, but we were on the other point. It is best to treat the Congress party’s phony war over Modi2.0 as the best joke of the month. We should listen and watch with amusement and not take it seriously.