Rahul Gandhi has not changed, India has |
Rahul Gandhi’s emergence as the great new hope of Indian politics is often misrepresented as the arrival of ‘a new Rahul Gandhi’. That interpretation gives too much credit to nearly two decades of relentless caricaturing of this leader with a big heart. If this is an inflection point in the discovery of his politics, of what he has been fighting for, let that belated realisation not be confused for the emergence of a new politician.
RG’s appeal has grown no doubt and if you scanned social media in the wake of the rousing march of 12 October, you’ll even have seen new young converts professing their love for him, of how they distrusted him earlier but now know better what he is about.
The core of Rahul Gandhi’s politics — his unshakeable belief in social justice, his championing of India’s youth and their legitimate demands, his clear and fearless articulation of the dangers to the Constitution from the RSS-BJP’s majoritarian agenda, his crusade against electoral manipulation — acquired definition a long time ago. So, pundits who see this moment as the arrival of ‘a new Rahul Gandhi’ are possibly coming to terms with their own late realisation or are rationalising their past reservations.
What is changing is India’s perspective on the Modi government’s authoritarian politics, its (mis)governance record, its capture of India’s democratic institutions, its misuse of investigative agencies to hound the Opposition, its subversion of electoral mandates by engineering defections, its desperate bid to cling to power. Rahul Gandhi has been flagging all this for longer than many media pundits care to remember; what........