It took Rahul Gandhi 10 years to appear for an interview but in less than 36 hours it became sadly apparent that his first open media exposure had proved to be counter productive. All it has seemingly served to do so far, is reopen the debate around the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, and goad two of its remaining three allies Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and National Conference (NC) into raising voices of dissent against the Congress.
The twin developments have no doubt caused some serious concerns within the party. Firstly, the ghost of 1984 has come back to haunt it, that too at a time the party was making an all out attempt to target Modi over the post Godhra 2002 riots.
While the BJP jumped on the issue right after the Rahul Gandhi interview with Arnab Goswami was aired on Times Now, AAP leader and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal went a step further, meeting Lieutenant Governor Najeeb with the intention of reopening the 1984 riot cases and constituting a SIT (Special Investigative Team) to probe them. In Punjab meanwhile, the Akali Dal has gone ballistic over the issue.
Has Rahul Gandhi done the Congress more harm than good?
This is firstly a direct result of Gandhi's admission during that interview that "some Congress men were probably involved" and secondly because of his claim that unlike the Modi government in Gujarat in 2002, the union government headed by his father in 1984 had tried to stop the riots.
"The difference between the 84 riots and the riots in Gujarat was that in 1984 the Government was trying to stop the riots. I remember, I was a child then, I remember the Government was doing everything it could to stop the riots. In Gujarat the opposite was the case. The Government in Gujarat was actually abetting and pushing the riots further. So there is a huge difference between the two things, saying that innocent people dying is absolutely wrong."
While Rahul is getting flak from both within and outside his party for reigniting the 1984 riot debate, the fact remains that it was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who led the charge against Modi on 2002, which left other leaders including Rahul wide open for questioning around the 1984 riots.
The Congress' damage control idea, which was to magnify Rahul's image as the protector of youth and minorities, unfortunately boomeranged as well.
Just as party workers were trying to find some comfort in the Congress national ad campaign, "Kattar soch nahi, yuva josh", which was targeted at Modi's alleged Hindu communalist approach, a young Muslim man, identified as M Faheem Baig posed a vociferous challenge to Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh at the launch of the National Waqf Development Corporation Limited (NAWADCO) in New Delhi's Vigyan Bhavan. Baig was countering Manmohan Singh's claims about minority welfare schemes before being gagged and escorted out of the conference hall by security personnel.
The party will now have to think of new ways to make Rahul appeal to the minorities. An ad campaign is simply not the answer to the trust deficit that has been generated among the minority communities over the years.
The bigger trouble for the Congress however, is coming from its own alliance partners. Two of it's three remaining allies, NCP and NC strongly indicated that they could desert it in coming elections. Although the National Conference has since reportedly patched things up with Congress, the NCP is still saying that an alliance with the Congress is "very difficult in a democratic process".
But what is worse for the Congress, is that these allies are now softening their positioning towards Modi. The third partner Ajit Singh from the RLD has remained silent on the issue but post the Muzaffarnagar riots his political weight has become inconsequential. Singh is now faced with an existential crisis, with members from his own Jat community switching over to the BJP and the supportive Muslim community becoming deeply suspicious of him.
Though the Congress has been trying hard to sew up a new alliance along the same patterns of its winning 2004 formula, apart from a weakened Lalu Prasad Yadav's RJD in Bihar, no other political party is interested in tying up with it. The Congress led UPA2 has so far been deserted by the Trinamool Congress Party (TMC), Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Paattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and some other smaller outfits.
The biggest of its present allies, the nine-member NCP came out in the open to counter Rahul Gandhi's charges against Modi. Senior NCP leader and union minister Praful Patel's statement was most revealing, "If the judicial system has given any pronouncement I think we ought to respect it and we need not question it further... There's no point to comment because it is for each one to give his or her version but the fact remains that perception today is important and if the judicial system has given a certain finality to any controversy, I think we should let it rest there."
His remarks are significant in the backdrop of NCP chief and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar's earlier expression of doubt in Rahul's ability to lead the country. The NCP has been at the loggerheads with the Congress on several issues but has so far not broken off ties.
Another long term Congress ally, National Conference indicated that their ties had reached at a breaking point. Omar Abdullah came out rather strongly against going into an alliance with the Congress in the coming elections, "Both Congress and the National Conference have a presence in the three regions of the state. If we start giving seats to them, we start to lose our identity in those seats, and what is the guarantee that votes will be transferred from the Congress to the NC and vice versa…There are reservations in our party. Sections in the Congress too would like to do it alone."
Since then however, a report in the Hindu suggests that The Congress and the National Conference are close to resolving their troubles after the former made it clear on Wednesday that it was not opposed to creation of new administrative units in Jammu and Kashmir.
The BSP and DMK have refused to have tie-ups with the Congress. The question is when everything else is failing, can an "idea" called Lalu Prasad Yadav and a Rs 500 crore ad campaign convince people in Rahul's ability to lead the country. There are many who say he had a better chance if he had not done that interview.
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