'Rahul Gandhi's a bore': Highlights from Firstpost Salon with Aatish Taseer

The guest for the first edition of Firstpost Salon was author and journalist Aatish Taseer, who joined us for a lively discussion about one of the more incendiary topics in Indian politics: the elite of Delhi. Here are some of the most memorable moments from the conversation with the author of The Way Things Were.

‘Rahul Gandhi’s a bore’

For an author whose book The Way Things Were deals with the elite of Lutyens’ Delhi, how could its most prominent occupant of it be forgotten?

Taseer was asked about whether Rahul Gandhi was a nice guy to be in conversation with over a glass of wine rather than lead the country.

“He’s a bore but it’s not nearly enough (to be a nice guy),” said the author.

According to the author, one of the reasons, Gandhi seemed so disconnected was because of the inability of the elite in the past to partially dismantle the colonial education structure.

Taseer said that there needed to have been a certain dismantling of colonial education after India received its independence and that the elite sending generation after independence to convent schools was damaging.

“The most damage took place in the post colonial generation,” he said.

He said that due to the heaping of confusion on confusion by subsequent generations, by the time you got to someone like Rahul Gandhi you had people who’ve gone very far away from their original culture.

“It’s very difficult to operate in a country when you’re so divorced from it,” he said, adding that it had crippled someone like a Rahul Gandhi.

Check out the other highlights