Rahul Gandhi suffers from foot-in-the mouth disease

by MulaiAzhagi Fri Feb 03, 2012 12:32 pm

Nehru-Gandhi scion Rahul Gandhi can never escape the looming shadow of the Italian connection, which, like Banquo’s ghost, surfaces in the most embarrassing ways. The identity of the recipients of the kickbacks in the Bofors gun deal and Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi’s dubious role in the episode may have been swept under the carpet, but during election campaigns the Italian linkage becomes a sore point.

This time, however, it is not political opponents but Mr Gandhi who chose to invoke it, in the process giving an opportunity to adversaries to trash him. While spewing pre-poll rhetoric at Mansa in Punjab, the Congress general secretary is said to have referred to his mother Sonia Gandhi being from Italy — a fact held against her by opponents — in the context of Punjab’s farmers working on farms in Italy (Canada, England and America) and, thereby, helping drive that country’s economy.

Taking umbrage at the comment, some leaders of Punjab hit back. Youth Akali Dal president Bikramjit Majithia viewed it as an attempt to denigrate the people of the State since the comparison alluded only to presumably unlettered farmers toiling on foreign soil as labourers, and omitted mention of migrants in high places, such as Ministers in Canada, judges in the US Supreme Court and Nobel Prize-winning scientists. The comparison is faulty also because Ms Sonia Gandhi is in a key position of power. Akali Dal MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal, wife of Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, castigated the Congress leader for ridiculing “our NRI brothers”. Ms Badal also advised him “to take a small job anywhere in the country before dreaming about the biggest job of this country”.

Mr Gandhi’s foot-in-mouth remark has cost him dear. It is not the first time either. A few years ago, he triggered a furore by lauding the contribution of his forbears to nation-building, referring to each by name, while completely ignoring the role of other Congress stalwarts. Non-Congress leaders, of course, do not count for much. It is such narrowness that is seen to be his greatest failing.

For, anyone who aspires to lead India, a nation distinguished by immense ethnic and cultural plurality as much as by numbers, making it the second most populated country in the world, must have a clear idea about its history and evolution. He or she must have the breadth of vision to understand that no one religion, ethos, worldview, ideology, race, line of rulers, dynasty or family shaped its growth.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/50987-dynasty-not-democracy.html

Hitskin.com

Rahul Gandhi suffers from foot-in-the mouth disease

Rahul Gandhi suffers from foot-in-the mouth disease