Rahul Goes To West And Switches On The Ludicrous Mode Once Again

Since the June 2024 setback to the Narendra Modi government, there is a sense among a section of the voters that one day, Rahul Gandhi will indeed become the prime minister.

This group reads the 2024 Lok Sabha election results as a starting point in Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) and Hindutva's decline in electoral politics. 

Given this ‘expectation’, there has been some ‘momentum trading’ with respect to Rahul Gandhi’s public image and persona. Many in the ‘Right Wing’ had also begun, secretly or otherwise, the task of mentally reconciling themselves to see Gandhi as PM. A sense of defeat had already overcome this group and all hopes of fighting the 2029 General Elections had already been given up. 

However, the 'PM-in-waiting’ and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi has handed them an opportunity to assess the threats of his prime ministership afresh and organise themselves to agitate against it. 

Speaking at a diaspora event in Virginia, US, on Monday (9 September, local time), Rahul Gandhi said that the fight in India is not about politics but instead about whether a Sikh will be allowed to wear a turban or a kada.

"First of all, you have to understand the fight is not about politics. The fight is about whether a Sikh will be allowed to wear his turban or go to the gurudwara in India. It's not just for Sikhs, but for all religions,” he said. 

The first point to make here is the obvious rebuttal that what Gandhi said is untrue. It’s false. There is no conflict anywhere in India over Sikhs wearing turbans or the kada. In fact, all military and security forces accept the turban as part of the uniform for a Sikh employee. 

In fact, recent times have also seen a debate that if Sikhs in the army can be allowed to wear the turban why can’t Muslims be allowed to wear a skull cap but the debate has not even got traction enough for the armed forces to issue a statement, leave alone taking up the demand for consideration. 

Additionally, Sikh passengers can also carry a kirpan on flights. A kirpan is a dagger or a sword and is part of the list of five items that Sikhs are supposed to wear at all times. Again, the permission to carry a kirpan on board a flight is a privilege not afforded to any other community. 

The second point to be made in response to what Rahul Gandhi said is that the only time the Sikhs found it difficult to wear a turban in independent India was in the early days of his father, Rajiv Gandhi’s prime ministership in 1984. 

Former prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her security guards at her residence on 31 October 1984. The assassins were both Sikhs, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh. Earlier in the year, Indira Gandhi had authorised military action on the Golden Temple in Amritsar to drive out the Sikh militants hiding inside.

The five days after her death (with Rajiv Gandhi as the PM) saw a pogrom unleashed at the Sikhs in Delhi and other cities in northern India. Mobs would identify Sikhs by their turban or their long hair and beard and proceed to slaughter them. Many Sikhs cut their hair and discarded their turbans for the sake of their lives. Many victims claim that the mobs were led by Congress leaders. 

A former Congress MP, Sajjan Kumar, is serving a life sentence for his role in the pogrom. Another former MP from the Congress, Jagdish Tytler, is now facing charges of murder, abetment of murder, rioting and promoting enmity among people based on religion after a Delhi court ordered the framing of charges against him late last month. 

Stories of people saving Sikhs from Congress mobs are abound in public memory. This is what K N Govindacharya, a former RSS pracharak and a critic of Atal Bihari Vajpayee had to say about Vajpayee saving a group of Sikhs: “I have seen that side of Vajpayee... His house was at Raisina Road, and in front of his house was a taxi stand. Just few steps away there was a Youth Congress office, where we have Rajiv Bhawan, and suddenly an angry mob emerged from the Youth Congress office. Atal ji saw the mob was baying for the blood of Sikh taxi drivers, and in that situation he stood between the mob and the Sikh taxi drivers. He took morcha till the police came, if you see that moment you will know that it was not a politically correct step. He did that only for humanity." 

Sam Pitroda, who is often seen with Rahul Gandhi on the latter’s tours to Europe and America notoriously responded with “hua toh hua” (what’s done is done) when asked about the Congress’s role in the 1984 pogrom in 2019. 

In recent years, Rahul Gandhi has displayed a tendency to highlight India’s divisions whenever abroad or utter statements which are either blatantly false, or dangerously misleading. The results of the Lok Sabha elections appeared to have enhanced Rahul Gandhi’s profile and led to expectations that he might behave with more responsibility when on foreign shores. But Gandhi laid all such ‘rumours’ to rest and showed he’s the same leader who complained that "Europe and America are not doing enough to restore democracy in India". 

All of this could have in fact been excused if Gandhi made these proclamations from Indian soil in the heat of an election campaign. But here we have the leader of India’s opposition sitting in America and alleging that India’s elections are rigged and that minorities are persecuted.

Given all this, in case you were among those who thought Rahul Gandhi’s prime ministership was inevitable — do you now see why you must fight the possibility?

Also, for those in ‘momentum trading’: a week is a long time in politics and the coming five years before 2029 polls have more than 250 weeks.