‘Rahul Gandhi lacks aptitude,’ Obama gives a major heartbreak to Indian liberals

It’s been an awful day in office for social media liberals and Congress-sympathisers, as no less than the former President of the United States – Barack Obama took to penning his honest opinion about the uselessness of being Rahul Gandhi in Indian politics. Coming from the blue-eyed boy of liberals himself, Obama’s takedown of Rahul Gandhi has left many in India with an existential crisis, who now know not how to respond to such calling out of their political lord. In his new book, being called a memoir of sorts, titled ‘A Promised Land’, Barack Obama has made a funny, yet valid observation about Rahul Gandhi.

“Rahul Gandhi has a nervous, unformed quality about him, as if he were a student who’d done the coursework and was eager to impress the teacher but deep down lacked either the aptitude or the passion to master the subject,” an excerpt from Obama’s ‘A Promised Land’ reads. The book, which is slated to hit the stalls this month, has been reviewed by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for the New York Times. It is in her review that the said excerpts about Rahul Gandhi, his mother Sonia and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came to light.

While Obama is said to have called Sonia Gandhi ‘beautiful’ in his to-be released book, he speaks of former PM Manmohan Singh in high regard, saying that he came across as a person having a sense of “impassive integrity”, which loosely paraphrased would mean that Manmohan Singh is a principled and highly moral man, yet who does not easily let out the same through his expressions. As for Sonia Gandhi, the book reportedly reads, “We are told of the handsomeness of men like Charlie Crist and Rahm Emanuel, but not the beauty of women, except for one or two instances, as in the case of Sonia Gandhi.”

Liberals and Congress supporters knew not how to react to the developments, and to their former and future party President being exposed so magnificently for who he is, in kind words of course, by nobody less than Barack Obama.

As is evident, liberals have been left heartbroken by a person who they looked up to. Barack Obama was supposed to be the flagbearer of progressive liberalism, who should have ideally showered heaps of praises upon his Indian counterpart – Rahul Gandhi. How he has chosen to describe Rahul instead, has definitely turned the former US President into the ‘devil incarnate’ for some Indians.