In 2014, the Nehru-Gandhi cheque decisively bounced with the electorate. Sonia and Rahul Gandhi had led the party to its most humiliating electoral debacle. With 44 seats, it could not even claim to be Leader of the Opposition. In that media appearance after the rout, the grim Sonia and the strangely smirking Rahul appeared to be at their political nadir.
Contrast this with the mother and son in Parliament on Wednesday. A barb from a BJP MP saw an irate Sonia Gandhi storming with other Congress MPs into the well of the house to protest, while Rahul Gandhi displayed a new-found dramatic flair that would have been inconceivable a year ago.
"Sushmaji, you had lowered your eyes when I said I am speaking the truth even as I looked straight into your eyes," Rahul declared with the kind of emotion that would put Dilip Kumar to shame.
In a speech that was perhaps his most combative yet, he went after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying, "Today, he (PM) does not have the guts to sit in the chair and answer our questions. He does not have the guts to face us."
Later, talking to reporters outside Parliament, there was more dialogue-baazi: "Sushma Swaraj's daughter is Lalit Modi's legal counsel. Is taraf maataji, us taraf parivaar. Maataji, parivaar, paisa, permission: This is the link that I want to establish."
In a twist of fate, Arun Jaitley, one of the most powerful cabinet ministers in the NDA, gave the duo a back-handed compliment by complaining that they had “taken their defeat very badly” and were “unable to accept the fact that anyone outside the Gandhi family can also rule this country”.
The Gandhis would not be the only sore losers around. The problem is the Gandhis have proven that they can actually make their displeasure count. Even their personal pique, as Jaitley makes it out to be, can mobilise enough support to hold Parliament hostage for weeks. That does not make it a good thing at all, but it also shows that the bold claims of a Congress-mukt Bharat and a Gandhi-mukt Congress might be premature.
Sonia with her stilted Hindi, and Rahul with his gaffes are hardly tailor-made for Indian politics. After the election, it seemed to only get worse. The Congress confab to analyse its loss could not break out of the status quo. Rahul disappeared to an undisclosed location for some personal chintan time. Some old Congress hands even dared to do the unthinkable — criticise the leadership. The NDA tried to wean away old UPA allies, who they reasoned would only be too eager to desert a sinking ship.
It seemed unlikely that Sonia and Rahul, whose personal charisma was always rather limited, would be able to hold a tattered and battered party together. Until now. Sonia always seemed to treat politics as the family cross to bear. Even her turning down of the post of Prime Minister was cloaked in an aura of sacrifice. If Sonia enjoyed anything about politics, she kept it tightly under wraps.
Rahul oozed reluctance from every pore, helicoptering in and out of politics, like the reluctant scion who wanted to be an artist but was being forced into the family business. In contrast, Narendra Modi relished retail politics, jabbing at them in his speeches, grinning and chuckling with sly innuendo about Madam and shehzada. The Gandhis looked pained, as if they were holding their noses as they got into the sweaty rough and tumble of politics, while Modi seemed to be having a grand time riffing with mammoth crowds.
How ironic that in defeat, the mother-son duo finally seemed to have started to look like they might enjoy politics. Sushma Swaraj, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje gave the sinking Congress ship a lifeline, and they grabbed it with all their worth. When Sonia stood out in the public chanting of slogans, she actually seemed to be enjoying the naarebazi. As reported by Sanjay K Jha in The Telegraph:
Sonia Gandhi today showed the Congress something it had forgotten: how to shout.
Jyotiraditya Scindia, Deepender Hooda, Sushmita Dev and Gaurav Gogoi, four of the younger MPs of the Congress, yell: " Mann ki baat bandh karo...."
"... Bandh karo, bandh karo," the chant is completed by Sonia, her clenched fist punching the air.
Pumped up, Sushmita, a first-time MP from Assam, declares: " Lambe bhashan bandh karo (stop long speeches)."
" Bandh karo, bandh karo," Sonia keeps the beat and chuckles.
Rahul, pumped up after his “sabbatical”, proceeds tear into the PM with a gusto he did not have on the campaign trail. He makes sardonic remarks about a suited-booted sarkar, displaying glimmers of humour that were completely missing in 2014. Whether the rebooted Rahul is here to stay or can make a quantitative difference to his party’s sliding fortunes is another matter altogether.
But to the BJP’s annoyance, the Congress has proved more disruptive than they had imagined an electorally chastened party could be. Mulayam Singh Yadav garnered praise from Narendra Modi himself for trying to end the three-week-plus deadlock in parliament saying “We want the House to run. This (protest) cannot continue.” But Samajwadi Party members were back in the well of the House demanding the release of the caste census. Trinamool had taken a wait-and-watch attitude to the Swaraj affair, until the Congress MPs got suspended. Then they joined the boycott. When Mamata Banerjee visited Delhi, she complimented Sonia for leading the fight in Parliament whereupon Sonia apparently responded “I have learnt it from you.” Even the embattled Swaraj, by singling out Sonia-ji in her emotional speech to defend herself, was giving the Congress leader who was not in Parliament, some extra clout. “Sushma Swaraj is doing drama, she is an expert in theatrics,” responded Sonia.
Even though much had been made of everyone who skipped Sonia Gandhi’s iftaar dinner, it’s clear that none of the smaller political parties want to quite risk unilaterally dumping the Congress just yet. As Firstpost’s Sandipan Sharma writes “The Congress, to the surprise of its followers and dismay of its critics, is punching well above its weight.”
The problem is — to what end? Other than the scheduled end of the Monsoon Session, there’s no face-saving way out for either side in this logjam. The BJP, with its superior numerical strength, cannot afford to look like it is giving in to the demands of a party of 44. The Congress, after saying its wants heads to roll, cannot easily justify anything else. The new-found mojo of the Gandhis might not even be good news for the Congress either, for it means the party cannot escape the feudal dependence on their First Family either.
But whatever happens, what is fascinating is that at a point when an illness-plagued Sonia and a disinterested Rahul could have shrugged and walked away from it all, they have decided to try and be asli desi politicians. Their histrionics might be as Jaitley put it, a “liability on the economy” but in their supporters’ eyes, better a weighty liability than simply irrelevant.
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