Opposites attract. Compatibles detract. The successive spats between Union Minister for Women and Child Welfare Smriti Irani and Congress's Prime Minister-in-waiting Rahul Gandhi just registered an escalation in political warfare, with a verbal artillery charge by the feisty former actress in Parliament last week.
After Rahul lambasted Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence on Manipur during the no confidence motion, Irani's puissant counter response was for the headlines. Rahul had castigated Modi, alleging, "You have murdered the voice of India, which means you have murdered Bharat Mata in Manipur... My mother is sitting here. The other mother, Bharat Mata, you killed in Manipur."
The Speaker even had to expunge part of his speech, provoking a freshly vitaminized Congress to ask whether 'Bharat Mata' is an anti-national phrase. The flying kiss Rahul blew in the House later enraged Smriti even more: this Western gesture, now popularised by Bollywood, wasn't lost on the BJP's nationalist narrativists. Never before has any MP behaved like a pantomimist in the Lok Sabha. Within 24 hours, Google had almost a million searches about the Smriti-Rahul fracas. Rahul owes his infamy to his pedigree and new fame to the Bharat Jodo Yatra. Smriti, an actor who faced the humiliation any unconnected budding artist has to endure in showbiz, attained political superstardom thanks to her ability to perform as an administrator and fight her adversities like a tigress unchained.
It was no coincidence that Smriti was deputed to speak on behalf of the government. She is a habitual Rahul basher and nemesis of the Gandhi dynasty. She spent much time denouncing the Gandhi Parivar and their increasing irrelevance during her combative speech. She told Rahul: "You are not India because India is not corrupt. India believes in merit, not in dynasty, and today of all days, people like you need to remember what was told to the British - Quit India. Corruption Quit India, Dynasty Quit India. Merit now finds a place in India..." And she went on to add: "I object to something. The one who was given a chance to speak before me displayed indecency before leaving. It is only a misogynistic man who can give a flying kiss to a Parliament which seats female members of Parliament. Such undignified conduct was never before seen in the Parliament of the country..." According to published reports, without naming any person, she took the entire Gandhi clan to task by saying, "It shows the khandaan he comes from and what his family and party feel about women."
Interestingly Rahul has rarely personalised their antagonism or passed an adverse comment against Smriti. According to Rahulites, he doesn't wish to create a He vs She trope since the Congress's journeyman is also its Prime Ministerial candidate. However, many middle level Congress leaders have been using highly hateful language against her. But the BJP has wisely chosen Smriti. She is perhaps the best person for the job. Besides being a woman, she is a better communicator than Rahul, is multi lingual, and an equally well known face in India.
Ironically, both oppugnant orators joined politics at the same time in 2003; Smriti a year earlier. Rahul contested his first Lok Sabha election a year later from Amethi in 2004 and won hands down, pun intended. Irani also contested her first election in 2004—against Kapil Sibal from Chandni Chowk, Delhi and lost. She used to be a wildly popular TV actor, hailed for her role in 'Saas bhi Kabhi Bahu thi' in which she played the stellar lead as a sorrowful 'Bharatiya nari' for eight years. Rahul was college trotting from St Stephens College to Harvard while Smriti moved up the political ladder, holding various local and national level posts in the BJP. Rahul first became Congress General Secretary and afterwards party president for a short period. Sometime in between, he was labelled with the derisive cognomen 'Pappu', which generated its plethora of memes. He was also the first Gandhi to resign as Congress chief and also to decline calls to return repeatedly. During the past few years, he has undergone an image makeover by projecting hirsute maturity and controlled tenor in conversations: his well-choreographed Bharat Jodo Yatra was a steroid shot serviced by his strategy spinmeisters. But he owes his new political gains more to the BJP's ridiculously rampant obsession with him. It seems to be the mandate of every district level party worker to Union minister to savage Rahul personally. The BJP's mission of Congress-mukt Bharat looks impossible in the near future; the party now feels that Rahul and Sonia can, after all, hold the party together. If the ruling party can get Rahul on the defensive, they hope his newfound stature may ultimately collapse.
Evidently, the BJP's target is to pulverise Rahul's electoral winnnability. They have no one better than Smriti to accomplish the task. She pulled a miracle in Amethi by trouncing him by over 50,000 votes. She was chosen to contain Rahul and convert him into a liability for the Congress. Soon after the Amethi result was declared Irani thundered, "Kaun kehta hai aasmaan me surakh nahin ho sakta? (who says one can't achieve the impossible?)." In truth, the Congress was expecting Rahul to lose in Amethi, so he stood from a second seat in Wayanad, Kerala, which he won. Smriti would have defeated him in 2014 itself but for the last minute transfer of Samajwadi Party votes to him. Mulayam Singh Yadav told me in an interview that he received a call for support from 10 Janpath, which he couldn't refuse. A night before the polling, all SP workers in Amethi were told to mobilise voters for Rahul: he won by just a lakh of votes. Smriti has been an MP since 2011, first in the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat for two terms and subsequently in the Lok Sabha. No other member of the BJP has spoken as contemptuously against Rahul as she. Now that Rahul is back in the reckoning, the Congress is preparing to oust Smriti from Amethi by fielding their dynastic mascot again. Rahul can comfortably get re-elected from any borrowed seat like Wayanad or any safe seat from Tamil Nadu. But he remains a half-leader without a full pull factor unless he recaptures his lost family fiefdom. At 51, age is on his side. He has pan India visibility which no other BJP leader other than Modi has. But he is also the BJP's best bet to keep the hope of Congress-mukt Bharat alive if Smriti repeats her act in Amethi. Politically Rahul and Smriti aren't made for each other. As the war of paradoxes escalates in hyperbole between the two gladiators, history is scripting the present for the future.
POWER&POLITICS
PRABHU CHAWLA
Follow him on Twitter @PrabhuChawla