How can the one thing that a person is most proud of becoming the biggest curse for them? A person’s surname is the person’s pride. It is the person’s identity. Coming with a loaded surname in India can give people an automatic social status upliftment. This is best exhibited by the Gandhis of the Congress party. Just look at the Gandhi family. Congress takes pride in the surname ‘Gandhi’, but this surname has become a headache for the Grand Old Party. From Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to Indira Gandhi, to her son Rajiv and his wife Sonia, to their children Rahul and Priyanka – the Gandhi surname has ruined them all.
Such is the baggage that the Gandhis have had to carry, that even those who seemingly ‘broke away’ from the family and rebelled against it but refused to give up the besmirched surname are today counting their final days in mainstream politics. We are talking about the likes of Maneka Gandhi and her son Varun Gandhi. Maneka is Sonia Gandhi’s sister-in-law. Varun is Rahul and Priyanka’s cousin. However, Maneka and Varun are in the BJP. But that has in no manner stopped the ‘Gandhi’ surname from working its curse on the rebellious duo.
Recently, BJP announced its national executive, which proved to be a big blow to both Maneka and Varun Gandhi, as the party dropped them out of the crucial body. It must be remembered that Varun Gandhi has been making anti-BJP remarks incessantly for quite some time now, while his mother has already earned quite a reputation for herself by abusing just about any ordinary citizen. The same was not given a miss by the BJP, which is why it dropped the two leaders from its national executive.
The Pride of Being a Gandhi
Maneka Gandhi and Varun Gandhi thought they were untouchables, and that they could say whatever they wanted to, in whichever manner they pleased. They banked on the famed ‘Gandhi’ surname to shield them from any action. The duo thought that being ‘Gandhis’ in the BJP would mean that the saffron party would not dare touch them. However, pride in the redundant ‘Gandhi’ surname has now cost the two leaders gravely, and both of them now stare at the end of their political careers.
‘Gandhi’ – Ruining Lives Since Times Immemorial
Let’s be honest. The only reason the Congress has survived post-independence is because of the gift which Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi bestowed on Feroze Ghandy. The Gandhi surname has a dark history associated with it from the times of Mohandas Karamchand himself. Sure, many claim that MK Gandhi played an instrumental role in India’s independence. They might even be true in their assertions to a certain degree. However, when it came to political acumen, Gandhi was a wholesome failure, which is best exemplified by the fact that he agreed to the partition of India only to gift Jinnah and Nehru with personal kingdoms for themselves.
The Gandhi surname has also been besmirched by allegations of the ‘Mahatma’ engaging in adultery and blatant womanising. However, all of his misdeeds were masked by his name. The ‘Mahatma’ he was called. And the Congress’ royal family has been milking on his name ever since. But they have not been noticing that the Gandhi surname has been ruining them, slowly and steadily.
The Gandhi Clan
Indira Gandhi, who happens to be a non-Gandhi daughter, by the way – of Jawaharlal Nehru, inherited the ‘Gandhi’ title from her husband, Feroze Ghandy, and things have been going south ever since. Indira Gandhi broke the Indian economy. She nationalised everything under the sun. Indira followed a hardcore socialist economic policy whose impact, frankly, India is still recovering from.
Many claim that she broke Pakistan into two halves – which is an absurd lie. Indira had no choice but to go for an all-out war with Pakistan for the sake of India’s survival back then. It was the armed forces of India alone that broke Pakistan. What Indira certainly did, however, was a gift back over 90,000 Pakistani prisoners of war back to the charming Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Despite Pakistan being crushed, Indira did not dare to retrieve Indian territories occupied by Pakistan in Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan.
She was, of course, killed by her bodyguards for Operation Blue Star, which saw Sri Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar being turned into a war zone in which thousands of innocent civilians lost their lives. How Indira Gandhi created a Frankenstein monster like Bhindranwale, meanwhile, requires no introduction.
Rajiv Gandhi and his Family
“But Rajiv Gandhi brought computers and cars to India,” they say. Pray tell, would India be running without computers and cars had it not been for Rajiv Gandhi? It is absurd how people give credit to a good-for-nothing man based purely on Congress’ propaganda. Rajiv Gandhi did nothing but provide employment to his Doon school buddies, apart from giving rise to political storms like the Shah Bano verdict reversal to the adventure at the Sri Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya. And then, of course, Rajiv is most famous for having justified the killing of Sikhs after the assassination of his mother, saying that when a big tree falls, the earth shakes.
Read more: How Rajiv Gandhi saved the man responsible for the Bhopal Gas Tragedy
Rajiv Gandhi too was killed by an assassination carried out by the Tamil extremist group – LTTE.
Rajiv Gandhi’s wife, Antonio Maino, better known as Sonia Gandhi, won some elections for the Congress party but was never really accepted as an Indian leader owing to her Italian lineage. The Gandhi surname could take her only as far as heading a shadow government between 2004 and 2014 when Dr Manmohan Singh was Prime Minister.
Do we really need to talk about Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi? They are both disasters in their own right. They are a living example of how the Gandhi surname has ceased to be a status uplifter and is instead beginning to drag them down. Rahul Gandhi is considered insignificant in India today, while his sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has proven to be a failure in politics despite all the tall claims of her being the Congress’ saviour. All in all, for as long as the Gandhis remain in control of the Congress, the Grand Old Party will keep running itself deep into the ground.