The crime of being Rahul Gandhi in Modi's India

Let me begin with a disclaimer. I am not a Congress bhakt, since that is how political affiliations have come to be described in Modi's India. I have reasons to say that with more pride than a reader of this column might fathom. 16 years ago, in 1999, as president of the Aligarh Muslim University Students' Union, I was offered a national position in the Congress by a senior party leader. I refused.

For two reasons essentially. I, along with a large section of Indian Muslims, then did not think the Congress really had the will power to fight communalism when it actually encouraged it in all its forms all these years. Since the Babri Masjid demolition a few years before my election, the AMU campus was predominantly anti-Congress. Two, and more importantly, as an elected representative, I could not have taken the unilateral decision of joining a mainstream political party without taking the consent of the people I represented. So it was a question of principle too, something that is not necessarily followed by other student leaders in Aligarh.

However, despite my scepticism for most political parties, I find this overarching visceral pleasure that TV reporters, media commentators and rival politicians have taken in the last two months in ridiculing the absence of a senior politician from New Delhi nauseating to say the least. Let's look at what Rahul Gandhi is accused of. That he vacated the fort when his party was in the middle of a bitter spat with the ruling dispensation over the controversial Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Bill 2015 proposed by the BJP. Or that he did not disclose the location of his sabbatical, leaving his party spokespersons to mumble in defence in various TV debates about his whereabouts.

It is perhaps being forgotten in the whole discourse around Rahul allegedly missing the land Bill bandwagon is that he was one of the chief architects of the law passed by the UPA in 2008. In other words, the arguments on the basis of which his mother Sonia Gandhi is now leading a passionate defence of the 2008 law, were actually laid out by her son years ago.

It should not be forgotten that Rahul had shown remarkable leadership, even bypassing a section of Congress, led by free market-enthusiasts including then PM Manmohan Singh, and had succeeded in prevailing over during the ten years of UPA rule. His left-of-centre stand on land rights, environment, on passing an ordinance without taking Parliament in confidence, or India's in-your-face poverty is well-known.

Take the infamous interview that he gave to Times Now's Arnab Goswami in the run-up to the 2014 elections. In a rare media appearance later mocked widely, the Congress leader ended up apologising once again for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, saying some of his partymen must have participated in the killings on the streets. Isn't India's largest minority still waiting (hopelessly) for a similar gesture by the present prime minister, who, on the contrary, seems to revel in an environment of hatred and division?

Or the fact that Rahul, defying his party's position, openly tore down a controversial ordinance his party was planning to promulgate to defend tainted leaders like Lalu Prasad. Isn't that kind of political honesty now being appreciated with a certain Arvind Kejriwal in power in Delhi?

Rahul's only failure is that these could not translate into votes for his party in the recent elections, which, we have to admit, had little to do with real issues anyway. But Rahul, like any other naive politician in India, knows that nothing is permanent in politics. Half-baked truths or blatant lies of a certain politician might take him places (literally), but they also may not necessarily translate into votes next time. Fool the voters once...

Nothing succeeds like success. In contemporary Indian politics, that adage assumes another dimension. While nothing succeeds like successful politicians, the onus of defending the failure falls on the defeated while everybody else goes to town mocking it, gleefully sharing Internet memes, WhatsApp jokes and Twitter hashtags.

It is a scary thought to bear that failure, as integral a human folly as success, will not be tolerated in India. In the age of political jingoism, trigger-happy TV journalism and perennially salivating social media, a reticent, brooding politician who avoids prying cameras or adding to the surround sound is an eyesore. A political anti-hero, if you will.

But the brouhaha around Rahul bashing reveals a more deeper malaise that we perhaps either fail to or refuse to acknowledge. Other than a contempt for a family with an Italian-origin matriarch, it is, without doubt, the rise of a cynosure called Narendra Modi. Whether we admit it or not, but there has been a distinct revision in the way politics is now reported in an India under Modi.

What perhaps does Rahul more harm is the unavoidable comparison with his bete noire, Modi, who is everything that Rahul is not. Modi loves the attention that a pliant, awestruck media loves doling out to him even when he bats an eyelid. Modi is a hyperbole who loves the sound of his own voice while it's a strain to try and hear Rahul in his rare press or Parliament appearances.

What is wrong with the natural heir to the Congress throne treating his fate with an uncanny diffidence or indifference? Was the Congress leader really wrong when he called the pursuit of power in politics a poison? What is so sacrosanct about a public figure forced to assume a public visibility? How do we know he takes no interest in the affairs of the party when leaders across the political spectrum swear by his leadership and vision?

I am perhaps old school. I long for a politics of sobriety, mutual respect and a difference of ideas. Reducing them to a clash of personalities defeats the very idea of political differences and discourse. It is also as much a reflection of the kind of politics we as a nation perhaps deserve. It is about time we strived for better.