Earlier yesterday, senior Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi hightailed it to Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh after a rampaging mob of ‘protesting’ farmers clashed with BJP workers, resulting in the death of 8 people.
Gandhi, who seems desperate to prowl for issues that could be exploited to corner the Yogi administration and brighten Congress’ otherwise gloomy prospects in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, decided to politicise the incident after having pulled a similar kind of PR stunt in Hathras, another UP town which was convulsed by the gang-rape and murder of a 19-year-old girl in October 2020.
As she tried to enter Lakhimpur Kheri on the night of October 3, the police stopped her. While UP Police was trying to detain the Congress leader, she threatened the officers that she would file cases of molestation and kidnapping against them.
Video of Gandhi went viral on social media platforms where she was seen threatening the Police. She said, “Are you forcing me to sit in this [pointing to the police vehicle]? Are you trying to kidnap me? This is your legal status? Are you getting it? Do not think that I do not understand.”
प्रियंका गांधी पुलिस को धमका रहीं !!
— BALA (@erbmjha) October 4, 2021
जनाब घमंड तो रावण का भी नहीं रहा ….. pic.twitter.com/Z2kNHKNefq
The Police officer said he would arrest her if she did not let them detain her. She said, “Arrest me. I will go happily with you.” It seems like she also alleged they were forcing her to sit in the vehicle. The Police officer said, “Who is forcing you? We are not.”
She replied, “You are pushing me. If you keep doing so, it will attract cases of assault, attempt to kidnap, kidnap, attempt to molest, attempt to harm. Are you getting me? I understand everything. Try to touch me.”
Similarly, other politicians, including Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, were also arrested as a preemptive measure to keep the volatile situation in Lakhimpur Kheri under check.
But, as Priyanka Gandhi was prevented from entering the village and detained by police officials, the Congress ecosystem went into overdrive to draw a parallel between the Gandhi scion’s detention in Lakhimpur Kheri with her grandmother Indira Gandhi’s Belchi visit.
Congress supporters and sympathisers compare Priyanka Gandhi’s visit to Lakhimpur Kheri with Indira Gandhi’s Belchi visit
Several sympathisers and Congress-leaning propagandists saw Priyanka Gandhi’s detention in Lakhimpur Kheri as yet another starting point of her political rebirth and the revival of the Congress party in UP politics just like Indira Gandhi had resurrected a moribund Congress party after her visit to Belchi in Bihar 1977.
Journalist Rajdeep Sardesai, whose predilection for the Congress party is often apparent and unmistakable, posted a tweet wondering if Priyanka Gandhi’s visit to Lakhimpur Kheri is her “Belchi moment”.
So @priyankagandhi takes centrestage in Lakhimpur Kheri protests by being on the ground through the night. Her Belchi moment? (I hope a younger India on twitter doesn’t ask what is Belchi now?) https://t.co/j71bO1OARW #lakhimpurkheri
— Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) October 4, 2021
Before long, social media websites were replete with posts speculating if Priyanka Gandhi’s visit to Lakhimpur Kheri is her “Belchi moment.”
‘Belchi’ moment? https://t.co/FwAu7y1hRU
— Amitabh Pathak (@AmitabhAAV) October 3, 2021
1977 :: Indira Gandhi Visiting Belchi Village In Bihar pic.twitter.com/grW0Uf17kN
— indianhistorypics (@IndiaHistorypic) October 3, 2021
History Repeating itself…#PriyankaGandhiwithFarmers#Belchi#lakhimpurkheri pic.twitter.com/XPsdID8dDb
— Jayvardhan Singh Rathore 🇮🇳 (@JaySinghINC) October 4, 2021
Amusingly, this is not the first time that Priyanka Gandhi’s visit to a village struck by violence is hailed by some sections of the commentariat as her “Belchi moment.” Just like the slavish media have been persistently trying to announce Rahul Gandhi’s ‘coming of age’ for more than a decade now, they have also been earnestly involved in describing every other visit by Priyanka Gandhi to violence-stricken areas as her ‘Belchi moment’.
This is Priyanka Gandhi’s 2nd, sorry, 3rd ‘Belchi moment’
Back in 2019, Gandhi visited the bucolic town of Sonbhadra in Uttar Pradesh after 10 tribals were gunned down by the land mafia. That visit, too, was characterised by the media channels and Congress sympathisers as her attempt to fill in her grandmother’s shoes. Then, there was the Hathras incident in Uttar Pradesh last year, when journalists and supporters fell over themselves to conjecture that it would play a pivotal role in reviving the Congress party, just like Belchi visit by Indira Gandhi did back in the 1970s.
Every once in a while, when Congress leaders sense their popularity is on the wane and the party is in dire straits, they pull off a stunt of visiting the aggrieved family with the aim of cashing in on the public sympathy. There hope is that such visits would attract positive coverage and undercut the groundswell of resentment brewing against the Congress party. It is this hope that is making Congress supporters and sympathisers hark back to Indira Gandhi’s visit to Belchi village in 1977 that was so hyped media that it ended up dramatically upended the ebbing fortunes of the party then.
What is Indira Gandhi’s Belchi moment?
It was 1977, the public discontent against Indira Gandhi was on its peak, thanks to the simmering anger among the people over her misbegotten plan of imposing the Emergency in the country and curtailing individual rights. When about 14 Dalits were massacred in Bihar’s town of Belchi, Gandhi sensed it as a political opportunity to placate the resentful sentiments people harboured against her.
She immediately rushed to Belchi along with a cavalcade of 35 cars, rode an elephant and managed to attract popular grandstanding despite a recent election defeat and had the locals applaud her as the saviour of the oppressed class. The result was evident in the next elections when Indira regained power handsomely.
Indira, whose political career was about to hit the rock bottom, found the ladder made of these 14 Dalit lives and made a strong comeback. The Belchi visit was hailed by the media as the watershed moment that tipped the odds in favour of Indira Gandhi. Hailed and hyped by a pliant media and ecosystem, Belchi helped Indira and the Congress party to remain relevant in the national politics, and it even laid the foundation for her coming back to power in 1980.
About four and a half decades later, the Congress party is again at the crossroads, with its popularity and acceptance at its nadir. The recent Punjab fiasco has also eroded whatever little trust people had in the leadership acumen of the current generation of Gandhi leaders.
As questions are raised over Gandhis’ claim on Congress leadership, the partisan media journalists and sycophant members of the Congress party are desperately hopeful that Priyanka Gandhi’s visit to Lakhimpur Kheri would garner the same amount of sympathy and support as grandmother’s visit to Belchi did and once again reverse the downward spiral of the Congress party.
