Rahul Gandhi is one politician who has gone through multiple rounds of “transformation” mostly egged on the by Media which is sympathetic to the Gandhi family. The latest is how open Rahul Gandhi is to communication and how he can hold “unscripted sessions” with journalists. On Tuesday, the official Twitter handle of the Indian National Congress put out photos that showed Rahul Gandhi interacting with about 100 women journalists.
Congress President @RahulGandhi met and interacted with women journalists earlier this evening and what a wonderful interaction it was! pic.twitter.com/FskLSXhciF
— Congress (@INCIndia) July 24, 2018
On the very next day, The Print chose to put out a video that claimed to reveal ‘what Rahul Gandhi told 100 women journalists’, but turned out to be 3 minutes of uncanny appreciation directed towards the Congress President, much like what “objective journalists” had peddled on the day of the no-confidence motion debate, and what they continue to propound everyday.
However, there was a specific individual who was hailed by the ‘liberals’ for her brazen Hinduphobia, especially hurt by The Print’s “coverage” (read generic praise) of the meeting with Rahul Gandhi, citing the fact that this was meant to be “off the record” (confidential), in a series of tweets- that carried over from last night to this morning.
Um this was off the record https://t.co/VgbXBo1Jpj
— Annie Gowen (@anniegowen) July 25, 2018
Is Off the Record a “fluid” concept in India? OTR Means OTR https://t.co/VgbXBo1Jpj
— Annie Gowen (@anniegowen) July 25, 2018
Aren’t you president of the Editor’s Guild? @ShekharGupta This meeting was Off the Record https://t.co/VgbXBo1Jpj
— Annie Gowen (@anniegowen) July 25, 2018
It is confusing. @INCIndia said clearly Rahul Gandhi’s comments would be off the record, so we honoured that. They then tweeted out photos, but not a transcript of his remarks. https://t.co/pir3TXl56U
— Annie Gowen (@anniegowen) July 26, 2018
It is well worth asking, what perturbed Annie Gowen so much when The Print had merely put out their cliché sympathy for the hug in Rahul Gandhi’s words, and their so-called ‘message of love’ in the video. Does Annie preempt that something more confidential or “off the record” may be put out, or is it merely the fact that she missed out on the opportunity to put her own reports out?
However, there is a much more important question that needs to be asked here: what business does the man attempting to adopt a ‘soft-Hindutva’ policy have with a woman who had viciously stereotyped Hindus, and addressed Hindu deities with the least respect?
It was not long ago when Annie Gowen had asked the Twitter staff to “delete” all her “Angry Hanuman followers”, depicting shameful hostility towards an entire community, and the basic Indic belief system. And the same woman who found “those who embrace the “Angry Hanuman” meme to be virulent and threatening”.
Not only is she the person who labelled the picture of a sacred Hindu deity as a “meme”, but she also became the person who resorted to abhorrent means of stereotyping every worshipper and adorer of a specific form their God, to be “virulent and threatening”, and those that can “cut her up to pieces”.
While this was only one incident, there have been other occasions involving seriously controversial remarks that featured Annie Gowen.
Rahul Gandhi, who chose to reveal his ‘janeu-dhari’ and ‘Shiv bhakt’ side before the Gujarat elections and whose aide Shashi Tharoor calls himself a “proud Hindu” (and yet peddled the “Hindu Taliban” theory) chose to make a person like Annie Gowen (amongst others), a messenger of his election campaign.
