Ramachandra Guha in his book Patriots & Partisans writes, “Had Shastri been given another five years, there would have been no Nehru–Gandhi dynasty. Sanjay Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi would almost certainly still be alive and in private life. The former would be a (failed) entrepreneur, the latter a recently retired airline pilot with a passion for photography. Finally, had Shastri lived longer, Sonia Gandhi would still be a devoted and loving housewife, and Rahul Gandhi perhaps a middle-level manager in a private sector company.”
Guha may have been correct about predicting the future of other family members of Nehru-Gandhi family, but he highly overrated Rahul Gandhi. It is not because of his minuscule IQ that Rahul Gandhi would not have qualified the aptitude test of any company – leaving no chance of getting a job – but due to his multidimensional illiteracy coupled with his gross inability to comprehend the questions and reproduce the answers, he would have been a perfect disaster for any examination hall.
The interview of Mr. Rahul Gandhi with Nicolas Berggruen is the recent display of the same.
Though a large section of media picked an unnecessarily placed quote from the interview that “Modi thrives on the politics of hate” to make headlines; in next few paragraphs I will dissect Rahul’s responses to a set of preset questions to demonstrate his multi-dimensional illiteracy.
In response to the first question, “How is Indian democracy fairing against the challenges of divisive forces”, Rahul meandered purposelessly comparing India to USA, Europe, and China. While comparing India to Europe, Rahul almost contradicted himself in a single sentence by saying, “our diversity is more like Europe’s but if you look at states like Tamil Nadu and Mizoram it is greater than Europe”. It is beyond understanding that why Rahul Gandhi thought to compare India’s culture to that of USA but it was shocking when the vice president of the grand old party chose to compare India with China for answering a question on democracy.
Further in his answer to the question Rahul mentioned rural to urban migration, economic insecurity, UID, RTI which were in no context to the question asked. If comparing Indian democracy to China was gross political illiteracy, not answering anything in context to the easiest of the question asked was the total incapability to comprehend.
In response to the second question which was on the ills of social media for politics, Rahul Gandhi gave an extremely offensive statement about state of affairs in India by saying, “Tribals, Dalits, and Muslims are simply being told by the ruling party that they cannot be a part of India’s vision. Journalists are being shot dead.” Again the above statement has nothing to do with the question asked. Given Rahul’s inability to comprehend the question, how would he explain a Dalit being appointed to the highest possible office in India unless he forgot who the president of India is ?
In his answer to the next question, Rahul told, “In today’s time, the power in India is more centralized than China”. Though, it is ironical for any congress party leader to talk about power concentration at top, but mentioning India has come to a state where the power has been concentrated in PMO in the same way communist party does in China, suggests either his total loss of faith in constitution or lack of knowledge of the Indian constitution which stands rock solid on the three pillars of democracy.
Intrigued by Rahul Gandhi ’s constant reference to China, the interviewer Nicolas Berggruen asked a more China-centric question about its new Silk Road initiative. As expected, Rahul’s response was not better than a school going student’s answer of out of the syllabus question. Mr. Gandhi could not add more in his answer except that it’s a powerful policy and he didn’t anticipate any clear response to it.
The postscript of the interview in the Huffington post very categorically states that the interview was “edited, condensed and adapted for clarity”. However, even after such massive editing which required three different words to justify it, the interview had Rahul Gandhi written all over it. It is a shame that the India’s largest opposition party is still carrying a man as their supreme leader who can’t qualify a general knowledge test comprising questions on India’s culture, democracy, constitution and political affairs.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/modi-rahulgandhi-india_us…
https://www.telegraphindia.com/…/jsp/opi…/story_12304113.jsp