Vande Mataram anniversary turns into a political mess for the Opposition
On Monday, the debate in Lok Sabha on the 150th anniversary of Vande Mataram, the national song of India, proved once again that the Congress-led Opposition in the House is a rudderless ship getting battered and bruised by the strong political wind blowing across the nation. Barring the speech by Prime Minister Narendra Modi extolling the importance of the national song and how proud he felt to join the nation in paying tributes to Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, who authored the song, and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, the entire Opposition behaved as if it was a God given opportunity to beat the government.
There is a proverb in Malayalam which goes like this: “Ari ethra? Payar Anjaazhi”. The Lady of the house asks her maid servant how much rice has been measured to cook the noon meal. The maid replies that she has measured five bowls of cereal. What the lady asked was about the quantity of rice, to which the maid replied that she measured five bowls of cereals. There is no connection between the query and the reply. This is what the Opposition did in the Lok Sabha.
Tarun Gogoi, the Congress leader who spoke immediately after the Prime Minister’s opening remarks, went haywire in his speech and started talking about the bomb blasts in New Delhi and elsewhere in the country. “This government has failed in ensuring the safety of the citizens. Donald Trump is hosting Pakistan’s Prime Minister and Chief of Defence Staff at White House. Poor retailers in India have lost their livelihood because of online trading. There is a currency crisis as the rupee has fallen against the Dollar. The government is afraid to discuss these issues and is running away from the House,” said Gogoi. Excuse me, Sir. Monday’s debate was about Vande Mataram, about which you made only a passing reference.
Jagadambika Pal, who was presiding over the House after the PM’s speech, had to remind Gogoi about the topic of debate and pointed out that he was way off the mark. Gogoi responded with a flippant smile and assured Pal that he would stick to the topic. And what did he do? Gogoi blamed Narendra Modi and the BJP for their divide-and-rule policy, a style “immortalized” by the British colonial masters. What he forgot was that the same divide and rule policy was pursued by Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, and Sonia Gandhi (the last named is a woman without office but is the presiding deity of the Congress party). Congress leaders in each State are made to fight each other, thereby creating groups, sub-groups, and factions. But all of them pay their obeisance to the signora of 10 Janpath in the national capital.
One has to accept the fact that while the NDA MPs stuck to the topic of Vande Mataram, the Congress, its political masters, the DMK, and the All India Trinamool Congress had only one agenda: to humiliate the Prime Minister. Spectrum fame A Raja, the DMK leader, was totally in the dark about the topic of discussion, and while he was speaking, the expression on the face of his dear friend Kanimozhi made it clear to all that Raja was a failure.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, whom Congress leaders have started projecting as their Prime Ministerial candidate (in private discussions), was no different from her mother or grandmother. She followed the Congress style of “suppressio veri and suggestio falsi” to the letter and spirit. It is easy to make out when Priyanka Gandhi Vadra lies. Each time she speaks lies and falsehoods, the lady smiles flippantly. While speaking about Vande Matharam, most of the time her speech was harping on the contributions made by her great-grandfather, Nehru, grandmother, Indira Gandhi, father, Rajeev Gandhi, and mama Signora for the progress, development, and growth of the country. “What would have happened if Nehru didn’t build the Bhakra Nangal and Hirakud Dams?” she was heard asking. But she was silent about the poverty faced by millions of people in the country during the tenures of Nehru, Indira, and Rajeev Gandhi as Prime Ministers. People of our generation have not forgotten the “ship to mouth” existence of the Indians and the grandmother asking the countrymen to fast for a day every week so that those who are victims of poverty get a square meal a day.
There are good leaders in the Congress party who can stand up to the BJP. But the Nehru-Gandhi clan will not allow such leaders to hog the limelight, thereby becoming a threat to the son-daughter combo. The Leader of the Opposition was absent from the House on an important day like this to pay tribute to the national song. As Anurag Thakur of the BJP said, the Congress is eternally obliged to the Muslim League for facilitating the entry of the Gandhi sibling to Lok Sabha (both of them won from Wayand, a Muslim stronghold in Kerala).m
During 2014-2019, Shashi Tharoor led the Congress attacks against the BJP, and he was accommodated in the front row. But of late, Tharoor is not to be seen anywhere in the front rows which have been stuffed with court jesters like Hiby Eden, Rajmohan Unnithan, and the likes.
The effort by the Congress leaders to disrupt Defence Minister Rajnath Singh during his speech was highly condemnable. Rajnath Singh, like Narendra Modi, sticks to the subject and does not deviate from it at any point, thereby making his speeches articulate, lucid, and packed with information. But Congress leaders, especially the Nehru-Gandhi clan, do not like such speeches. They want the country to remain eternally illiterate, ignorant, and hungry. If these issues are resolved permanently, there would not be any Congressmen or Marxists or Moulavis in this country. Thank you, Prime Minister Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, and TDP leader Byreddy Shabari, for making the session lively on Monday. More about Vande Matharam, after the Rajya Sabha debate.
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2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
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