In “Hiddensee” by Michelle Hart, a woman and a girl find beauty in misery. In Indian politics, the Congress president Rahul Gandhi stands to see matching misery in his political career, if he happens to lose the Gujarat assembly elections.
A freshly elected commander of the vacillating Congress ship, Rahul Gandhi stands stranded somewhere in the middle of the Arabian Sea. The onus of taking the ship out of the wobbling water comes on his sturdy shoulder. And if the falling ship successfully emerges, his leadership would no longer be under straight challenge.
Rahul Gandhi’s condition oscillates between the Shakespearean phrase ‘to be or not to be,’ so long as the final results of the Gujarat elections are finally not declared. His political ambitions entirely depend upon the ultimate results. Until now, he has been a darling of his party, but he has to prove his political maturity by winning in the house of Narendra Modi, a big political wrangler.
Surely and certainly he is a child in politics before the unconquerable BJP leader. The Gandhi scion is despondent, as he has so far remained ineffective against the saffron storm. But what his confidence rests with, is the influence of three young local leaders of Gujarat, namely Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor and Jignesh Mevani.
The saffron leaders taunt him for his political despair owing to his constant failures in outsmarting them. His misery appears to extend with whatever things he does in various directions. Just as Hart writes, “…despondency, usually kept hidden, blew across the table like a draft,” similarly, the Gujarat gust of political air could not blow him behind the rival party’s plan.
I agree when India Today’s Panini Anand writes that,“A win in Gujarat will make the Opposition and those dissatisfied with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to see an alternative in Rahul. If he fails to deliver in Gujarat, the Opposition will refuse to see probabilities in him. A divided Opposition will miss preparing a comprehensive strategy against Modi.”