“The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lies comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love..” – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Lies are like quicksand on which once a man steps, he continues to sink under his own weight. What a pity that Rahul Gandhi who began his campaign immediately after being thrown out of power which he grew up believing to have divine right to, with a premise that Narendra Modi has lied and his politics is born out of propaganda and untruth finds himself sinking under the weight of his own lies as the five years of his own propaganda comes to an end with the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections.
When he presided over a thorough rout of the Congress in Delhi, he was asked as the head of his family-run political firm on the way forward and he had said that the party needed to learn from Arvind Kejriwal. Little did the unsuspecting nation realize that he referred to convert the art of lying to a national sport with the nonchalance of Kejriwal and deeper connivance of even more subservient media. Almost immediately after Narendra Modi came to power, Congress, not for a day surrendering to the public will, and working from inside to get better, began playing with lies. Their campaign began with Narendra Modi coming to power as they began calling him, directly and through their mouthpieces, Feku (a habitual liar in Hindi) and his promises twisted to be called Jumla (lies). As the 2019 elections come to end, the campaign which Congress began five years back has turned full circle and Rahul Gandhi finds himself at the other end of the questions pertaining to his own lie. Let us look at the claims made by Rahul Gandhi across the last few years.
They say, what is in a name. I agree. But then in electoral politics, in democracy, one of the most elemental rights of the people, is the right to truth, the right to transparency. His name itself has become a kind of mystery. Alleged degree of Rahul Gandhi, if reports are to be believed in, were in the name of Raul Vinci. The reports on this discrepancy have been doing round since long. Even in 2014 an India Today report mentions that Rahul Gandhi’s MPhil degree is in the name of Vinci, RahulT, where T, supposedly stood for Trinity. The India Today piece refers to The Telegraph article which confirms that Rahul Gandhi obtained his degree in the name of Rahul Vinci, although the article leaves it to Rahul Gandhi to clarify the exact name with which he graduated.
Private matter, yes, but for a person running for topmost public office, no. All it would take for Rahul Gandhi is to draw open his degree for public scrutiny and accept his aliases. But he would have his reasons for not coming clean on it. This to my mind as a common citizen and voter is the most fundamental of a lie. When clarifying his name, he may also clarify how his family appropriated Gandhi surname, a Gujarati title, twisting Ghandy of his great-grandfather to match that of Mahatma Gandhi.
He also came about to claim that his religion is Hindu and making it almost laughingly strange by detailing his Hindu credentials as Janeudhari Brahmin, while claiming to be an anti-caste crusader. As the common wisdom goes, any person inherits his or her religion from maternal or paternal side and that could be one of the choices of the family whether to follow the maternal or paternal tree of faith. Apart from propaganda calling Firoz Ghandy a Muslim, there are indisputable documents which establish Firoz Gandhi as a Parsi. If we consider that Rajiv Gandhi got his religion from his father, he was a Parsi and then Rahul Gandhi is a Parsi. If we presume that in the Nehru family, offspring took religion from the mother’s side, Rahul Gandhi would be a Christian. How is Rahul Gandhi a Hindu Brahmin, jumping two generations up to pick the religion of political convenience is a mystery? Not that it matters to Indian citizen while voting what Rahul Gandhi’s religion in reality is, nor it should. Indian is the same country, which even before stepping into the Twenty-first century accepted with open arms, George Fernandes in Bihar, from where he won elections with huge margins, from a Hindu-majority constituency with a negligible Christian presence. But it is again a matter of disclosure. When politicians are too lazy to work hard they find easier excuses for their failure. Maybe Congress felt the same after 2014 loss and attributed their losses to their leaders not being Hindu enough, and sought to make corrections. I would believe Rahul Gandhi would have come out as a more honest leader if he had confessed that either he is a Parsi or Christian, but secular enough to respect Hinduism, or that he had, of his own volition, converted to Hinduism. He has done neither. Your faith is private when you are a private citizen. It is really surprising that in a nation which boasts of thriving media, the questions on something as basic as the name and faith of a man wanting to run for the highest office is left to the opposing political party and no journalist worth his salt, even wants to write about it. Who is the real Rahul Gandhi, we want to know.
Now a new row about his citizenship has emerged. He has been in different phases of his life declaring himself as Indian and British citizen in various business documents. We are not even getting into the shady nature of those companies, which in one instance even had a director who simultaneously was on the board of more than a thousand companies. Whether these companies were fake fronts created for specific purposes is a matter of investigation, but my question is basic- “What is the real nationality of the man who has projected himself as the next leader of my country?” Now that we know that we know nothing of the Name, Nationality or religion of Rahul Gandhi, we look at the political lies he has been building his electoral campaign on, without any questions from those who are supposed to question. The media, who look at Rahul Gandhi as a vehicle which will carry them to their earlier days of unhindered glory and intellectual priesthood has remained silent and even colluded to carry the lies forward.
He began his campaigns, talking about the promise of transferring Fifteen Lakh to the bank accounts of all Indian citizen. When we look at the speech of Narendra Modi, we immediately realize that it was spoken as a matter of reference. Modi had said that there is so much Indian black money lying outside India that if it were to come back, it would mean fifteen lakhs coming to each individual. It would require a person to either dishonest or dimwitted not to understand what was implied here. It is like in mathematics when asked that if it takes x amount of time to reach the Sun and Y amount of time to reach the moon, what is the proportion of their distances from Earth and some dimwitted student files a case of perjury against the teacher claiming that it was impossible for someone to go to the Sun and teacher was misleading the students. But not only Rahul Gandhi said that, repeated that, it was also oft-repeated by the so-called intellectual shepherds to lesser mortals.
The other plank he took was that the Constitution was under danger under Narendra Modi. Constitution of India has been amended 103 times, out of which Congress amended it 75 times, BJP amended it 19 times, and Narendra Modi government brought in five Constitutional amendments. President Rule has been imposed by the Congress on various states 88 times, and 8 times by BJP (5 times by Vajpayee and Thrice by Modi). Not one journalist questioned Rahul Gandhi on his quixotic fights.
During demonetization, Rahul Gandhi jumped the queues in the much-televised act and claimed he had no money apart from four thousand he drew from the ATM. A few days later, he was abroad. He went to MP, promised the farmers that he will not leave them till their struggle reached some conclusion. Leaving some farmers dead after the protests turned violent, he was found in Italy, via Europe, to see his ailing maternal grandmother and media went Aww.
Rahul Gandhi claimed that Modi Government has scrapped in the SC/ST act, which resulted in almost riot like protests across the country. There was no such amendment made in the act. The violence happened and Congress came to power riding over the disenchantment in three states.
The lies would be innocent if they were not intended to drive a wedge among communities for political advantage. Another one of lie was on Beef ban, supported by media, it saw spate of protests reaching its peak with public slaughter of an innocent calf by Congress workers in Kerala, incidentally from where Rahul is fighting election. This was done knowing fully well that the ban was imposed by Congress under Indira and this would be one of the dumbest lie which resulted in driving possibly deepest wedge among Hindus and Muslims since independence due to trumped up emotions.
Then came the mother of all lies, Rafale which was to establish Rahul Gandhi as the most steadfast liar in the political history of the nation. So in a Government to Government deal, which was worth INR 59000 Crores, Rahul Gandhi first claimed that Anil Ambani was given cash benefit (not benefit, he claimed money has been transferred) of 1,35,000 Crores, sometimes, 1,30,000 Crores, 35,000 Crores and eventually settling down at 30,000 Crores. The overall offset commitment of 6500 crores was split across 72 Indian companies including DRDO, BEL and L&T. The total amount of offset deal value for Reliance was around 850 to 1000 Cr. I have not seen any journalist questioning Rahul Gandhi on this. Rahul Gandhi buoyed by lack of questioning went ahead, charging Modi with corruption, quoting obnoxious figures, even after the highest judiciary clearing it. In fact, in his latest lies, he made the Supreme Court a party to his lying adventure claiming that the SC has also agreed that there was corruption in Rafale. It needed a rap on the knuckle to admit that SC has said no such thing and a contempt notice to draw some kind of regret which Ms Meenakshi Lekhi aptly called “an apology of an apology.”
Then in the current campaign, Rahul Gandhi went to Naxal-infected Bastar claiming Narendra Modi Government has formulated a law which allows the Police to shoot any Adivaasi dead. The naxal terrorists keep on spreading such propaganda in terror-infected land since their intention is to overthrow a legitimate, constitutional government. For the topmost leader of the largest opposition party to go to such an area which has minimal connect to rest of developed India to validate the outlandish claim made by Rahul Gandhi, is downright evil.
The abundance of lies about what is present in Rahul Gandhi’s narrative makes one wonder about the truth in his promises about future, whether it is NYAY, where he once claims money will come from taxes, another time claim is made that money is already there, yet another time, he says CPSUs will be sold off to raise the funds for NYAY or any other promise in his manifesto. It would be foolish to believe in him until the time he comes clean on the lies he has spoken till now. I hope he understands that his brazen and blatant lies are indicative of his disrespect towards the people of India. We, as citizens and electorate have the right to ask Rahul Gandhi to come clean. We cannot forever be grateful to his illustrious forefather to suffer his lies in silence. Will the real Rahul Gandhi stand up or should we say, will the real Feku stand up?
