Blooper-prone Rahul Must Manage Optics

It has been over two decades since Congress leader and Gandhi family scion Rahul Gandhi ventured into politics.

- RUHI TEWARI

In these years, he has served as the vice president of India's largest opposition party and then as its president. He has been elected Member of Parliament five times and has been the party's de facto face against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He has been his party's star campaigner, addressed innumerable rallies across several elections, and led two pan-India yatras. As of today, he is the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha—a position of heft and meaning.

And yet, despite these decades of exposure and experience, Rahul Gandhi has yet to master the basic craft of managing public perception and continues to seem callow in politics. Yet another recent instance brings to light how Gandhi's lack of political maturity remains jarring. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court of India censured the Congress leader for his remarks against the Army in the wake of the 2020 Galwan clash with the Chinese, stating a "true Indian" would not say such things. The court, however, paused the defamation proceedings against him.

The Congress party has responded firmly, with Congress leader and Rahul Gandhi's sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra saying the court does not "decide who a true Indian is." To be fair, Vadra isn't wrong. It isn't quite the court's job to define a 'true Indian', and preaching and moral policing should hardly be its domain. This rebuke, as the opposition has rightly pointed out, is indeed unwarranted and also highly questionable.