Amid speculations around the internal strife in the Indian National Congress, The Quint has invited two senior political journalists to weigh in on the situation. This article is the first part of the series. The second article, by senior journalist Arati Jerath, can be accessed here.
Suddenly there is clamour in the media for Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi to surrender the political space they occupy in the Congress party. They are said to be politcally naïve for “obsessively” attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi and are advised to give up their ‘entitled recklessness’. Some media pundits have urged Rahul Gandhi to desist from ‘puerile tactics’ and criticised him for displaying ‘stubborn cussedness and a lack of political awareness’.
This is pretty caustic coming from a position ostensibly itself opposed to the majoritarian Hindutva politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But such critics would do well to remember that the personality of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his acolytes is not distinguishable from the politics they articulate.