RAHUL PLAYS VICTIM CARD FOR RESURRECTION

POLITICAL victimhood is a shortcut to entitlement on the road to victory. If amplified, it becomes an emotional magnet that binds the victim with those who matter. And the street matters. In the rhetoric of revolution, the martyr gets top billing as a champion of the masses who tilts at the windmills of injustice and misgovernance. In the countdown to the general elections, Rahul Gandhi and his party are playing the victim card with the chutzpah of gamblers betting on having aces up their sleeves.

- PRABHU CHAWLA

Their game is to target Narendra Modi by betting on a backlash: gather sympathy for their leader in his new avatar as India's hirsute messiah en route to political redemption.

Last week, the Election Commission scrutinised Rahul's speeches and sent him and his cohort notice seeking explanation for making derogatory and defamatory personal remarks against Modi. The BJP's complaint to the EC read: "Calling any person... a jaibkatra (pickpocket) not only amounts to vicious abuse and personal attack but also a character assassination of that person against whom such remark has been made with a clear intent to harm his reputation and mislead the public." The Congress predictably called the EC's move a conspiracy to tame and cripple Rahul's newly acquired oratory and electoral skills. This is not for the first time Rahul has been asked to explain his remarks. He lost his Lok Sabha seat and government bungalow due to a defamatory remark he had made against Modi's surname. He got back both through the court. Instead of deterring him, it emboldened him to attack the PM and his colleagues more ferociously. His advisors perhaps think playing the victim card and taking Modi head on would bring Rahul wider acceptability and enhanced visibility by pitting him as the only rival to Modi's mesmerising mass magic.