Lalit Shastri

Rahul Gandhi

Yesterday someone shared with me a write-up (in cut-and-paste – text format) on Whatsapp. The social media post took off by introducing the author as “Avay Shukla – a retired IAS officer, an environmentalist, and a writer.”

Naturally, without any prejudice, one started reading it. They say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” but this can’t be a thumb rule as wrappers do affect our expectations about what lies inside. The article by the retired Babu left me shaken and jolted as I finished reading the 3rd para, which I would like to quote:

Firstly, I write this as an ordinary citizen of India, a privileged one perhaps, but as susceptible to the slings and arrows of today’s violent forces as the poor chap who was beaten to a pulp with hammers in Gurgaon the other day for carrying buffalo meat, which is legal: it can also happen to me the next time I pick up my favourite kababs from Meatz. – Avay Shukla

I could not go beyond this. There was no point reading the rubbish produced by someone I thought should be having a sick mind. While brushing aside the piece, I wrote to the person who had shared the article: “I won’t touch this creepy write-up even with a barge pole. The analogy he has drawn by comparing “slings and arrows” a rubbish writer gets when he eulogises the crumbling Congress ecosystem that carries the stink of the rotten and unworthy modern day successors of the pre-Independence stalwarts who gave their all for the nation with someone beaten to death for carrying cattle meat, is most reprehensible. The person, who has made this comparison, should be condemned in no uncertain terms. What he writes deserves the dustbin. I feel sick as I have ended up wasting my valuable time writing about this person who obviously as a government servant must have cornered maximum comforts for himself and his family – much beyond what’s guaranteed under the statutes without bothering to return to the society, especially the last man in the queue, it’s due in adequate measure”.

Googling the text received on Whatsapp, I gathered, it was an opinion piece titled “The Only Opposition in India Today is Rahul Gandhi – Last man standing?” By Avay Shukla, published by thecitizen.in on 9 August 2020.

Every person who loves India would abhor Rahul Gandhi for his anti-India tirade on foreign soil in recent days. I find him beyond redemption ’cause the pattern is fixed. Rahul only ends up rolling out his insidious narrative before a handpicked audience abroad. What has rattled people the most in India is Rahul’s latest US tour and reports that his US event organisers were linked to Pak terror groups.

Nation’s dilemma

There is no public discourse especially when it comes to the Opposition in India. Rahul Gandhi for that matter is the biggest game spoiler. No wonder, Bharatiya Janata Party runs away with what it wants.

The Opposition is clutching at straws, doesn’t debate critical issues and is mostly on an agitational path on non-issues like Rafale, Adani and LGBQT. The State Governments have forgotten governance, some are anti-Hindu like the Mamata led Trinamul Government in West Bengal. The corrupt have a rate card for recruitment and those in Opposition tend to forget that most Enforcement Directorate and CBI cases are either Congress registered or court mandated. The rest believe in following Kejriwal’s playbook of freebies. Their track record is communal riots and genocide and there is nothing great either to write home about. If Prime Minister Modi wears his tilak as a proud Hindu, Pappu is a “chunavi” (electioneering) Hindu. He would rather don the skull cap. On the other extreme, in the midst of all the cacophony by the so-called secularists and the advocates of the Ganga-Jamuni tahjeeb, would you see an Owaisi sport a tilak? When it comes to the Opposition, people talk of the corrupt, and power hungry. Modi at least is building infrastructure, industry and allievating poverty. The opportunism of the opposition was in full display during the CAA and farm agitation.