Rahul Gandhi’s smirk that he did not need “permission" to speak in the Lok Sabha exposed, for a brief second, the Nehru-Gandhi family’s habitual disdain for democratic institutions and decorum.

This family and its members have been inculcated with the abhorrently undemocratic sense that they have been born to rule and that institutions and rules must be bent for them.

Rahul was obviously playing a game, backed up by a large coterie inside his party and operating outside it. It is a coterie for whom the only agenda is “remove Modi." It is evident for anyone who has followed that Rahul Gandhi looks out of his depth in Parliament. He is more of a “street-corner" type who is ill at ease within the precincts of Parliament. He exudes disdain for its well-laid procedures and protocols.

It was amusing to see the original traitor’s — Jawaharlal Nehru’s — great-grandson suddenly get worked up about an imaginary infiltration by the PLA into Indian territory. Willful abdication of vast swathes of Indian territory was the first act of betrayal by the Congress in the late 1950s. Nehru’s indecisiveness, his lack of strategic insight, led to India surrendering territory and self-esteem.

The saga of India’s recognition of communist China, as retold by former diplomat and foreign secretary, Vijay Gokhale, in his well-documented “Crosswinds: Nehru, Zhou and the Anglo-American Competition over China", shows how Nehru, egged on by his alter-ego Krishna Menon, naively jumped into recognising communist China, before the British. It served the British to push India into recognising communist China, before they did. “The tactical planning was absent from the exercises", writes Gokhale, “recognition became an end in itself. It became a procedural matter, rather than a matter for negotiation in which bargaining would bring desirable outcomes beneficial to newly independent India’s national security. Wider consultation within the Indian system might have led to greater reflection on the issue, but instead the matter was discussed and decided upon within a closely held group of advisors around Nehru, and in close consultation with Britain." That gratis recognition would bite Nehru in the years to come.

Menon was always tempted to write and speak in hyperboles. He regularly ignited Nehru with his verbal pyrotechnics. His standard line in letters........

© News18