The forthcoming Parliamentary election is a battle of ideas, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said on Sunday at a large rally at the capital’s Ajmal Khan Park in Karol Bagh. Countering without naming the BJP’s Prime Ministerial contender Narendra Modi’s eloquent denunciation of the ruling party’s politics of vote-banks and social fragmentation, Sonia Gandhi charged that the election would be a contest between those who stand for dividing India (read BJP) and the Congress which stands for a united India.
Accusing without naming the BJP, she said that some people seek to profit by spreading hatred in society, but the Congress maintains feelings of amity (sadbhavana) for its opponents also. Although the crowd listened patiently, the spontaneous rapport that BJP stalwart Narendra Modi strikes with his audiences was striking by its absence. Though no one left the ground while Sonia Gandhi spoke, as happened to Rahul Gandhi in the Delhi and Rajasthan Assembly elections and more recently in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, on Saturday, her speech in Hindi was both halting and laboured.
Although the Indian media has exercised the Omerta code on this issue, the fact is that Sonia Gandhi’s elocution is poor; her Hindi diction is weak; and she cannot speak extempore. The rise of a skilful orator like Narendra Modi has cost both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi heavily in terms of political allure.
To her credit, however, the Congress president read out her prepared speech gamely. Condemning the ‘natak of desh bhakti’ by some persons (read Narendra Modi), she said they should learn the meaning of genuine nationalism from the sacrifices made by the Congress and the jawans who defend our borders. “For BJP and others,” she declaimed, nationalism is just words (bhashan), but for Congress it is ingrained in the blood. Taking a pot-shot at Narendra Modi’s mocking the ruling party for using secularism as an excuse to not tackle the pressing problems facing the country on myriad fronts, Sonia Gandhi said, “Those who don’t believe in secularism cannot understand desh bhakti; they just want power at any price”.
In a sharp but oblique attack on the fledgling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Congress president said that for some people, the Government is “a child’s play,” and Delhi has recently seen how some people just abandoned the field and ran away. In the past ten years, she said, the Government headed by Manmohan Singh had done “historic work” for society and brought about a revolutionary change in the lives of several sections, as envisaged by the ban on manual scavenging, right to ply their trade to handcart pushers, right to education, right to food, RTI, and laws to make women safe. Several recommendations of the Sachar Committee have also been implemented, she claimed.
Asserting that the UPA has implemented the ‘One Rank One Pension’ demand of the armed forces (though budgetary provision has not been made), she said the Government brought the Sixth Pay Commission for Government employees and has set up the Seventh Pay Commission. Sonia Gandhi said that the UPA could have accomplished much more if Parliament had not been obstructed for eight years, and said that if voted to power, the Congress would ensure the right to health whereby citizens would be entitled to free medical aid, pensions would be given to the needy, and adequate provisions made for education and employment.
She herself entered politics, she said, to protect the country’s composite culture as exemplified by Congress stalwarts like Hakim Ajmal Khan, and warned that though elections are about winning and losing, Government is a tool for the good or the bad, depending on the intent of those who wield it. In a veiled admonition of the BJP and the RSS, she cautioned that some people and some organisations will take society and the nation towards darkness (barbaadi).
Pointing out that the Congress has ruled India for most of the time since independence, she expressed confidence that the people would not make any ‘mistakes’ and would continue to support the party. Throughout her speech, the audience, though impressive in number, maintained a stoic silence, unlike the raucous responses that punctuate the speeches of the BJP contender.
Niticentral.com, March 31, 2014