The latest outburst from Rahul Gandhi that tears all the ambitions behind an Ordinance into bits (and rightly so) shows that the India of 21st century is not very different from that of the Epic ages of millenniums ago. The right analogy that hits us is of a sulking Duryodhana throwing yet another tantrum on his weak father Dhritarashtra. But the bigger conclusion is this: The Congress vice president is unfit to lead a political party of modern India. There is just too much arrogance, extraordinary hubris and absolute disdain for the organisation he is expected to inherit and run.
Clearly, he knows his word is law. This is not to say that Rahul’s rejection of an Ordinance that allows a convicted legislator to continue to take part in proceedings of the legislature despite a July 10, 2013 Supreme Court ruling is wrong. On the contrary. By taking up this issue, first raised by the BJP and Aam Aadmi Party, then taken to the President, apart from the huge noise in the media and at dining tables, Rahul has gone against the UPA government, the Congress party and expressed the voice of the nation. The problem is that Rahul’s is not a voice like Milind Deora’s, who was the first Congress leader to have publicly denounced the act. “Legalities aside,” he tweeted on September 26, “allowing convicted MPs/MLAs 2 retain seats in the midst of an appeal can endanger already eroding public faith in democracy.”
This, when senior leaders were out in the open, facing bullets of allegations and defending this brazen Ordinance. For all his bravery, Deora is irrelevant in the larger scheme of things — without the ‘Gandhi’ suffix, anybody is a nobody in the Congress. When Rahul, whose voice along with Congress President and his mother Sonia, is law as far as the party goes — and unfortunately, as long as it is the leader of the governing coalition, is law for India too — denounces a legitimate Ordinance, it is time to re-examine who’s leading us, through the lens of totalitarianism. To hide behind two words “personal opinion” neither helps the organisation nor fools the rest of us. Promulgated with the might of the party and more importantly as far as the Constitution goes, the Cabinet, it is silly to rip it in public. And the only people who will believe that Rahul’s jaunt into Press Club was an off-the-cuff impulse decision will be the sycophants littered all over. Or the naïve.
But what’s happening in the Congress could well be a reflection of the goings-on in organisations anyway. Talking about unbridled competitive capitalism and the sanctity of “the bottom line” as the highest and only good,” Howard F. Stein explores the “universal psychodynamics of totalitarianism, wherein an ideology is created and embraced that radically simplifies the world, repudiates if not destroys all opposing views, and is intolerant of all doubt. In his 2007 paper ‘Organisational totalitarianism and the voices of dissent’, he argues that “a cultural ethos pervades many kinds of social institutions, with the result that workplace organisations are as likely to be regulated by fascist attitudes and relationships as nations are.” This idea of totalitarianism applies directly on the Congress party, with Rahul’s voice being an invisible command, irrespective of its merit. Or timing. If Rahul were so concerned about this issue, there was adequate time to debate it within the party, before allowing the Cabinet to translate it into an Ordinance. Were he sincere about the idea, he wouldn’t have humiliated the Prime Minister of India, hours before he would meet the US President Barack Obama. Even if it struck him as an afterthought, he would have done well to wait for Singh to return and find a face-save.
By his actions, Rahul has humiliated the office of the Prime Minister, the glow of which was already waning due to Singh’s doormat-like attitude. Clearly, the mark of a man who knows and lives by the dictum that his word is law. Critics accuse the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi of this sort of totalitarianism. But within the BJP, dissent is open (LK Advani’s letters, for instance), it is discussed (behind closed doors, leading to tremendous speculations) and when found to stand against the majority views, it and its rigid author are discarded. What we are seeing in the Congress, instead, is a reversal of that dissent, showing how just one man, one voice, one opinion — and ironically, its leader — can change the party line. And with it, the national agenda. Nothing could be more dangerous.
Read more at: http://www.firstpost.com/politics/think-modi-is-dictatorial-rahuls-totalitarianism-is-dangerous-1140363.html?utm_source=ref_article
Clearly, he knows his word is law. This is not to say that Rahul’s rejection of an Ordinance that allows a convicted legislator to continue to take part in proceedings of the legislature despite a July 10, 2013 Supreme Court ruling is wrong. On the contrary. By taking up this issue, first raised by the BJP and Aam Aadmi Party, then taken to the President, apart from the huge noise in the media and at dining tables, Rahul has gone against the UPA government, the Congress party and expressed the voice of the nation. The problem is that Rahul’s is not a voice like Milind Deora’s, who was the first Congress leader to have publicly denounced the act. “Legalities aside,” he tweeted on September 26, “allowing convicted MPs/MLAs 2 retain seats in the midst of an appeal can endanger already eroding public faith in democracy.”
This, when senior leaders were out in the open, facing bullets of allegations and defending this brazen Ordinance. For all his bravery, Deora is irrelevant in the larger scheme of things — without the ‘Gandhi’ suffix, anybody is a nobody in the Congress. When Rahul, whose voice along with Congress President and his mother Sonia, is law as far as the party goes — and unfortunately, as long as it is the leader of the governing coalition, is law for India too — denounces a legitimate Ordinance, it is time to re-examine who’s leading us, through the lens of totalitarianism. To hide behind two words “personal opinion” neither helps the organisation nor fools the rest of us. Promulgated with the might of the party and more importantly as far as the Constitution goes, the Cabinet, it is silly to rip it in public. And the only people who will believe that Rahul’s jaunt into Press Club was an off-the-cuff impulse decision will be the sycophants littered all over. Or the naïve.
But what’s happening in the Congress could well be a reflection of the goings-on in organisations anyway. Talking about unbridled competitive capitalism and the sanctity of “the bottom line” as the highest and only good,” Howard F. Stein explores the “universal psychodynamics of totalitarianism, wherein an ideology is created and embraced that radically simplifies the world, repudiates if not destroys all opposing views, and is intolerant of all doubt. In his 2007 paper ‘Organisational totalitarianism and the voices of dissent’, he argues that “a cultural ethos pervades many kinds of social institutions, with the result that workplace organisations are as likely to be regulated by fascist attitudes and relationships as nations are.” This idea of totalitarianism applies directly on the Congress party, with Rahul’s voice being an invisible command, irrespective of its merit. Or timing. If Rahul were so concerned about this issue, there was adequate time to debate it within the party, before allowing the Cabinet to translate it into an Ordinance. Were he sincere about the idea, he wouldn’t have humiliated the Prime Minister of India, hours before he would meet the US President Barack Obama. Even if it struck him as an afterthought, he would have done well to wait for Singh to return and find a face-save.
By his actions, Rahul has humiliated the office of the Prime Minister, the glow of which was already waning due to Singh’s doormat-like attitude. Clearly, the mark of a man who knows and lives by the dictum that his word is law. Critics accuse the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi of this sort of totalitarianism. But within the BJP, dissent is open (LK Advani’s letters, for instance), it is discussed (behind closed doors, leading to tremendous speculations) and when found to stand against the majority views, it and its rigid author are discarded. What we are seeing in the Congress, instead, is a reversal of that dissent, showing how just one man, one voice, one opinion — and ironically, its leader — can change the party line. And with it, the national agenda. Nothing could be more dangerous.
Read more at: http://www.firstpost.com/politics/think-modi-is-dictatorial-rahuls-totalitarianism-is-dangerous-1140363.html?utm_source=ref_article
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