- A heartfelt hug
Manini Chatterjee writes in her column for The Telegraph that the decision of the Congress president, Rahul Gandhi, to walk across to the prime minister’s seat in the Lok Sabha and embrace Narendra Modi last Friday apparently took even his mother, Sonia Gandhi, by surprise. His supporters were quick to hail the “spur-of-the-moment” act as a political masterstroke. His detractors dismissed it as a cheap gimmick that, once again, underlined Rahul’s political “immaturity” and confirmed that he was no match for Brand Modi.
But for anyone who has followed Rahul Gandhi’s trajectory, the concluding words of his speech expressing gratitude to Narendra Modi as well as his unscripted gesture of embracing the prime minister were neither tactical nor theatrical. Rather, it marked an organic progression of a deeply personal battle that has now fused into a much bigger political objective.
On other occasions, he has spoken of the anger and pain he suffered after his grandmother and his father were assassinated. For Modi and millions of his supporters, the Congress president may be the dynast greedy for power. But Rahul thinks of himself – and his sincerity is obvious even to cynics – as someone burdened by a cruel destiny who must overcome his personal demons and then take on the bigger challenges that fate has bestowed on him.
Rahul Gandhi has gone beyond politics as we know it. He has risen to become the singular moral antithesis to Narendra Modi.
- RaGa ‘clinches’ deal with arch foe NaMo: A cautionary tale of hugs and hisses
In his column for The Times of India, Jug Suriya writes that politics is said to make for strange bedfellows. At times it can make for what might be called hug fellows, who are equally eyebrow-raising.
In a dramatic gesture in Parliament, Rahul Gandhi turned the opposition’s no-trust motion against the government into an ‘all-thrust’ move when, after long and heated debate, he lunged across the floor of the house and grasped a surprised Narendra Modi in a warm embrace.
It remains to be seen what fallout, if any, the Congress leader’s up close and personal encounter with the PM will have on the nascent anti-BJP Grand Alliance, or Mahaganthbandhan, sought to be formed by an array of parties across the political spectrum.
The moral of the story is that when your opponent shows a willingness to bury the hatchet, make sure it’s burial place is not your back.
- The Danger That Lies in Academic Bureaucrats Taking Over Our Universities
Academic bureaucrats seek to reduce creative/critical learning to the typical UPSC Prelim pattern of mass examination, writes Avijit Pathak in an article for The Wire. He says that academic bureaucrats create a rigid mind conducive to the totalitarian ethos that abhors plurality, subjectivity and ambiguity.
At a time when we normalise surveillance, measure ‘efficiency’, value only the techno-managerial solution and suspect freedom, or see it as an escape from work, it is not easy to feel the university as a creative/experimental space, a site of alternative possibilities. Things, I fear, are changing fast. As academic bureaucrats become overwhelmingly powerful, critical pedagogues become marginalised. Idealism dies as fear or forced labour is normalised.
Sadly, we have accepted the logic of surveillance so much that we no longer trust our own ability to work with freedom. It is little wonder then that we have given so much power to academic bureaucrats. Is it really possible to see ourselves as creative pedagogues and fight the battle for freedom?
- The hug that Modi so hates
Radhika Ramaseshan writes in her column for Mumbai Mirror that Rahul Gandhi’s exposition of love in the debate might have evoked shades of Gandhigiri and conjured up the “jhappipappi” (hug and kiss) subculture of north India, but that was not the Congress president’s objective.
His stress on the absence of anger and hatred in him towards Modi and the BJP — despite being called names like ‘Pappu’ and ‘hybrid calf’ (the obsession with the bovine of the species is noteworthy) – is a politically effective foil against a narrative marked by invective and negativity, and acts dictated by visceral hatred towards minority communities.
But a hug and a wink that scandalised the BJP? Rahul’s gesture — and he must have mustered all the resolve at his command before making it — turned the BJP apoplectic, but why? Lalu Prasad’s son and RJD leader, Tejashwi Yadav, a friend of Rahul who meets him in Delhi’s faddy coffee shops, related instantly to the hug and the wink. Tejashwi tweeted: “Oh that wink my friend! Hit them hard where it hurts.” One can reasonably assume that Rahul’s peers and juniors across the political board would share Tejashwi’s feelings.
While voters do not mould their votes entirely on issues (increasingly, a party’s organisational skills come into play), Friday’s optics delineated the line between the Congress and the BJP, between a confident if aggressive Rahul and a fatigued Modi who has nothing new to offer.
- A matter of untruth
Indifference to facts has become a cultural phenomena, says Abdul Khaliq in his column for The Indian Express. He writes that if a choice has now to be made of the term that has captured the public consciousness in the last two years, it would most probably be “fake news”, the constant, never-ending refrain of Donald Trump when referring to the media.
Disinformation, distortion, exaggeration and plain falsehoods pervade cyberspace, cable, newsprint and the airwaves, mainly sourced from our politicians and media. A frightening new dimension has been added by the ubiquitous social media. In our licentious surreal world of “anything goes” news, reporting, tweeting and commentary where it is becoming almost impossible to sift truth from fiction, the indifference to facts has now assumed the proportions of a cultural phenomenon.
People now freely choose news and views that align with their identities and world view, the truth be damned. It would be no exaggeration to state that our country today is a truth-impaired, “fake news” Republic (no pun intended).